


Fortis Fortuna Adiuvat

by DeliriumsDelight7



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Dark, F/M, Gold is a ruthless bastard, Minor Character Death, Rumbelle John Wick AU, like probably a lot of them
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-16 19:14:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 33,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29212494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeliriumsDelight7/pseuds/DeliriumsDelight7
Summary: Rumbelle John Wick AURumford Gold is a former assassin deeply entrenched in the worldwide criminal network run by the High Table.  He spends his evenings at the New York Public library to bask in the presence of the object of his infatuation: the pretty librarian, Belle French.  When a case of mistaken identity puts Belle's life in danger, Gold must call on a lifetime of violence and ruthlessness in order to keep her safe.  When he is forced to reveal the monster within, will she flee from his savage brutality?
Relationships: Belle/Rumplestiltskin | Mr. Gold
Comments: 77
Kudos: 45





	1. Ante Bellum

**Author's Note:**

> Note: This story takes place in the world of John Wick, but it is NOT an adaptation of the movie. I can't bring myself to write a dead Belle. But the John Wick 'verse has such amazing worldbuilding that I couldn't resist playing in the sandbox a bit.

Typing up the final lines in the contract, Gold gave it one final perusal before carefully twisting the platen knob and removing the page from the antique typewriter on his desk. Once the ink was dry, he carefully tucked the pages into a fine leather folder, grabbed the golden handle of his cane and pushed himself to his feet. He limped carefully to his assistant Miss Frost’s desk and dropped the folder loudly in front of her. The ever-cheerful girl yelped at the noise.

“This lifestyle isn’t for the faint-hearted,” he snapped. “You won’t get far if you jump at every little noise.”

The girl nodded eagerly, her twin red braids bobbing with the movement. “Y-yes, Mr. Gold,” she stammered, her freckled cheeks reddening. “Shall I wire these over to Mr. King and Mr. Midas?”

He nodded impatiently. “Yes, the sooner they receive it, the sooner they can send me their latest quibbles over terms.” The two rival businessmen had been locked in negotiations for the better part of a year, each party refusing to budge on their demands. Things had gotten so heated that business dealings between King and Midas needed to be handled on Continental grounds, lest the proceedings end in bloodshed that would spark an all-out war that neither party could afford.

Finally, Gold had been called upon to offer his expertise. As an independent Broker, he had ties to neither side of the conflict, and his connections to the Continental were tenuous at best, making him the ideal go-between. Progress was slow, but it was progress.

Still, the constant back-and-forth bickering between the two men left him with a frayed temper and a pounding headache that left him longing for the simpler days of his youth. Days when his work was less exacting, more… hands-on.

He shook his head. Those days were long behind him. He’d fought and clawed to get to his current position, and while the work was just as merciless, there was far less clean-up at the end of the day.

“Once you’ve wired those documents over, you can lock up and go home,” he continued, rolling his eyes at the girl’s beaming smile.

“Thank you, Mr. Gold!”

Gold didn’t acknowledge her words, choosing instead to leave his young assistant to her work. Working the stiffness from his ankle, he made his way to the front of his shop. The shop, in fact,  _ was _ a front. On the surface, Mr. Gold was an antiques dealer. Old things had always held a sort of fascination for him, even as a boy. The sturdy construction, the elegant lines, the straightforward design that allowed one to conduct one’s own repairs and restoration, instead of having to rely on some bumbling repairman - he enjoyed antiques and artifacts for these reasons. Simpler things from a simpler time. 

As they said, “they don’t make them like they used to.” He wondered if the same could be said about himself.

Of course, an antique store in New York City saw very little foot traffic, which was exactly the point. The back room of his shop housed his true occupation: the brokering of deals between various parties of New York City’s criminal element. Everything from establishing gang turfs, to insider trading and corporate espionage, to human trafficking and the “disappearances” of inconvenient individuals. Physically his hands were immaculate, but figuratively they were just as filthy as they’d ever been.

Schooling his face into a stern, tight-lipped expression, Gold slipped out of his shop with a confident stride. He knew exactly the picture he painted to the public. Short of stature, walking with a cane to aid his limp, with streaks of gray showing at his temples, he gave the impression of weakness. His finely tailored suits in rich fabrics made it obvious even to an imbecile that he had money. He was an ideal target for a mugging. And while anyone stupid enough to accost him soon found themselves intimately acquainted with the handle of his cane, he found that he wasn’t in the mood to beat a man within an inch of his life tonight.

Perhaps another time, when he was feeling nostalgic.

Gold made his way toward The Continental. The hotel’s wedge-shaped building loomed overhead. Among New York’s other skyscrapers, this one was wholly unremarkable to anyone ignorant of the sanctuary housed within.

He stepped into the lobby, his eyes gliding unseeing over the fine, gray marble walls and floors. Lance Knight, the tall, dark-skinned concierge in the well-cut suit, inclined his head respectfully to Gold, who nodded in return. Without stopping, Gold continued past the front desk to the dimly-lit hotel bar.

Were this a Friday or Saturday night, the bar would be crowded with young patrons, the air vibrating with thumping electronic music that set Gold’s teeth on edge. But on a slow Thursday, the atmosphere was peaceful. The few patrons all ignored each other, focusing instead on their drinks and the mellow jazz playing softly over the speakers.

The tapping of his cane on the marble floors alerted the young brunette bartender to his presence. Miss Lucas tucked her single strand of red-dyed hair behind her ear.

“Heya, Mr. Gold,” she greeted. “Whisky, neat?”

He nodded. She served his drink of choice in a crystal rocks glass. Top shelf, of course. Even The Continental’s well liquor was higher quality than the top shelf liquor most other establishments carried. Pulling a small leather coin wallet from his interior jacket pocket, he nonchalantly thumbed out a single, large gold coin and laid it on the counter. Miss Lucas scooped it up with as much care as she would have given a handful of spare pocket change, palming it discreetly before jotting something down in a nearby ledger.

Gold noticed with a frown that there were only two coins remaining in his wallet, which had been custom-made to carry half a dozen of The Continental’s preferred currency. The coins were a ubiquitous aspect of the worldwide criminal underground into which he’d carved himself a niche, but the powers that be weren’t exactly handing them out like candy. His stores were running low. He’d been counting on the deal between King and Midas to pan out months ago to replenish his supply. Given the glacial pace at which things were progressing, he’d need to be judicious with the few he had left.

As he settled into a red leather armchair in the corner, sipping his drink and savoring the warmth as it slid down his throat, his mind wandered down a well-trodden path that was best left alone.

Belle French. The pretty librarian.

Wonderful, sweet Belle French with chestnut curls that shone auburn in the glow of the overhead lights of the New York Public Library.

Until a few months ago, Gold rarely ventured from his shop, his apartment, or The Continental for a quiet drink. He didn’t like being out among the city’s teeming masses, where any man, woman or child could sneak up on him and slip a knife between his ribs. His current line of work had earned him few friends, and his former occupations had given him a surfeit of enemies. His reputation still circulated in whispers, partly exaggerated tales of a man so ruthless and sadistic he skinned children for their pelts. Last he’d heard, they still called him by the ridiculous moniker he’d earned in his savage youth.

And so, knowing that it was a matter of time before he was attacked by some young twit still wet behind the ears and looking to prove himself, Gold had secured a few small caches of supplies around the city. Just in case of a rainy day.

His final stop had been the New York Public Library. He hadn’t been inside the building in the past decade; as a man of no small means, he preferred to purchase books himself rather than borrow them. A book he owned had no return deadline, no mysterious stains of dubious origin, no highlighted passages or obscene drawings in the margins. Quite simply, there had been nothing whatsoever to draw him to the library.

Until he met the librarian. Kind, lovely Belle French with smiling eyes the clearest crystal blue he’d ever seen.

He hadn’t meant to talk to her. His intent had been to slip into the stacks, unnoticed, and leave his parcel behind somewhere it wouldn’t be detected. But then she’d turned those eyes on him, and the sheer wattage of her smile had illuminated even the darkest corners of his soul. Next thing he knew, he was approaching the circulation desk and fumblingly asking for a library card.

_ He handed her his ID, cursing himself for the blush he could feel burning his cheeks as her fingers brushed his. For Christ’s sake, he was a hardened criminal on the wrong end of fifty, not some schoolboy with his first crush! _

_ Her eyes flickered between him and the driver’s license, comparing the picture to the man standing before her. The photo, he knew, was hardly flattering. The harsh lights in the DMV washed him out, bringing every crease and line in his face into harsh relief. It seemed even a man in a highly respectable position in the hidden criminal underworld didn’t have the connections to get a decent ID photo. _

_ “Rumford Gold, huh?” She looked up at him through her lashes, a mischievous grin curling her soft pink lips. “I like that. It sounds… distinguished. Elegant and worldly.” _

_ Tongue-tied, he blurted the first thing that came to mind. “Thanks, I picked it myself.” _

She’d laughed as though he’d told the funniest joke instead of what until now had been a well-kept secret. And from that moment, he’d been lost. He could deny nothing to Belle French, with the lilting Australian accent he’d kill to hear wrapped around his name again.

After all, he’d killed for far less.

And therein lie the crux of his problem. Belle French had filled his thoughts and haunted his dreams for months. Her beauty, her kindness, the quick wit that drew him back thrice a week to debate whichever book he was returning before borrowing a new one. She was far too good for him. And miraculously, she seemed completely unaware of the fact, if her beaming smiles and gentle blushes were any indication. Somehow, he’d managed to win the lovely librarian’s affections in spite of his looks, his limp, and the fact that he was twice her age.

Not that those things mattered. Were he twenty years younger, with an ankle that didn’t pain him on cold, damp days, he still wouldn’t come close to deserving someone as pure and unspoiled as Belle. Innocent, guileless Belle French, who illuminated the depths of his blackened heart with her light. And all he had to offer in return was darkness.

He’d done horrible things to get where he was. He’d killed, maimed, and tortured, without giving a damn whether those on the receiving end of his wrath deserved their fate. He’d betrayed friends and allies without a second thought. And if he could go back and do things differently, he wouldn’t change a thing. Not one. Damn. Thing.

Gold raised his glass to his lips, surprised to note that it was already empty. He hadn’t tasted a single drop after the first sip.

He was a monster. He knew this. One didn’t rise from the depths of the criminal underground without losing some of their humanity along the way. If he were a better man, a less selfish man, he would cut his library card to ribbons and never, ever return. But a better, less selfish man wouldn’t be in his shoes; he’d be long dead, killed a thousand times over by enemies, allies and potential victims alike. To survive his monstrous upbringing, he’d had to embrace his inner monster. And now that monster wanted Belle, wanted to clutch her close, clawing and snapping at anything that dared threaten her with harm.

An idle fancy. Someone as good as Belle had no enemies she needed protection from. He wouldn’t give into that greedy, possessive part of himself. Neither could he appease the man in him, the part that itched to know if her skin was as soft and warm and fragrant as it looked. And yet he couldn’t bring himself to stay away. He would continue to visit her at the library, aching with the need to hold her and protect her and caress her and snatch her away from the world’s prying eyes, until he went mad with it.

Clenching his hand around the golden handle of his cane to keep it from shaking, he rose from the crimson leather lounge chair. 

“Another drink, Mr. Gold?” Miss Lucas asked, already reaching for the bottle.

He waved her off absently. “No need,” he said. “I have an appointment.” Without another word, he left The Continental and made his way down the street to where his car was parked.

His borrowed library book sat innocuously on the passenger seat of his Cadillac. From there, it was a two minute walk to the library. He’d only gotten halfway through the book. Perhaps if he skimmed the final chapter, he’d be able to muddle through his latest debate with Belle on the importance of authorial intent. It would be embarrassing if she caught him out, but even that thought was less unbearable than the idea of waiting another day to see her.

Maybe this time, he’d have the strength to leave without borrowing another book.


	2. Scientia Ipsa Potentia Est

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If someone doesn't laugh at my HILARIOUS* joke that is the chapter title, I will pout.
> 
> Warning: this chapter contains a brief, undetailed description of sexual assault. Also, this chapter is where the violence starts. The whole story, from this point on, is probably going to get more and more violent. You've been warned.
> 
> *not actually hilarious to anyone who isn't Delirium

Belle wasn’t at the circulation desk.

That alone wasn’t cause for concern. The library was a large building, featuring many rooms with marble walls and high, cathedral-like ceilings. Surely her work often took her away from the desk. 

Still, he couldn’t help feeling ill-used. Every Sunday, Wednesday and Friday evening, like clockwork, Gold came to the library, and every time, she was there waiting for him. As soon as she heard the click of his cane on the marble floors, she’d look up with a bright smile, cheeks glowing and chestnut hair curling becomingly around her shoulders. Seeing the polished wooden circulation desk abandoned and empty left him feeling like he’d been cheated out of something precious. Something that was his alone. Never mind that today was Thursday, and Belle had no reason to expect him. Never mind that he had no claim on her.

Frowning, clutching his cane in one hand and the worn paperback library book in the other, he made his way stiffly up the white marble staircase, cursing whichever pretentious prat had decided that the main reading room should be on the third bloody floor. Better to condemn a man long dead than to curse himself a thrice-damned fool for wandering the enormous building like a lost lamb, searching for a woman who may not even be working today. Leaning heavily on his cane, he reached down to adjust his custom-made ankle brace where it had slipped.

His steps echoed hollowly in the stairway, seeming louder than usual for some reason he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Taking a moment to flex the stiffness from his ankle with a grimace, he made his way down the hall toward the reading room. His eyes slid unseeingly over the elaborately carved wood-paneled walls, utterly unappreciative of the detailed murals painted therein. As an antiques dealer of sorts, he had an eye for artistry and craftsmanship. But the beauty of the building’s architecture and paintings was a guttering candle in the face of Belle’s radiance.

As he came to the door of the reading room, he finally heard the sound of movement in the otherwise silent library. A peek through the open door revealed his quarry. Belle French was busily shelving books in the cavernous room’s wall-to-wall bookcases, her back facing him. Unlike most days, when her hair fell in tumbling curls down her back, today it was tied back in a haphazard bun. A single tendril clung to the back of her neck. His fingers itched to brush it out of the way. To distract himself from the urge, he let his eyes drift downward to her outfit. Her cerulean cardigan, her one concession to the autumnal chill, ended just below the dip of her waist. Her flaring hips were covered by a short, flirty skirt that fluttered maddeningly around her thighs with every move she made. Down, down, down the impossibly long expanse of her silky pale legs, which ended in a pair of sensible black Mary Janes with a one-inch heel.

Once she finished tucking the last of the books in her arms into its designated shelf, she swiped the sweat from her brow with a tired sigh. The exhausted slump of her shoulders implied that she’d been at this for a while. Looking around the room for the first time, he realized that most of the two dozen long, rectangular reading tables were covered with neat stacks of books. Usually people who made use of this room were considerate enough to return their books where they belonged; if a volume was left behind, a librarian on staff was quick to pick it up and reshelve it. 

Odd that he’d missed such a blatant detail. Usually he was more careful than this, but Belle’s presence had a way of monopolizing his attention. She was a distraction he could ill afford.

Gold leaned more heavily on his cane, preparing to announce his presence, but the creaky floorboard underneath did the job for him. Belle stiffened, her head coming up like an antelope scenting for predators. The sight set his heart pounding in his chest, excitement coursing through his veins. It was a familiar sensation from his youth: the thrill of the hunt, adrenaline singing through him as every muscle held him in perfect stillness, avoiding detection until the moment came to strike from the shadows. But where before it had been ambition-fuelled bloodlust making his muscles bunch in preparation to pounce, lust of a different kind surged through him now.

Belle’s voice broke him from his thoughts. “H-hello?” she called over her shoulder, her voice unsteady. “Who’s there?”

Fuck. What was he doing? Belle was afraid, and he was getting off on it. He was an  _ animal. _

He considered slipping silently away. He should. His reaction to her wariness proved that he couldn’t be trusted around her. But he’d already frightened her; vanishing without a trace would do nothing to allay her fears. He stepped forward into the room, letting the tip of his cane thump loudly against the floor. 

“Only me, Miss French,” he said with what he could only hope was a disarming smile. 

She turned to face him, one hand resting over her chest as she heaved a relieved sigh. “Oh, Mr. Gold! You scared the hell out of me,” she scolded.

She had every reason to be afraid of him. He’d long since stopped counting the lives he’d taken, the bodies and spirits he’d broken in the decades he’d been active. “I’m sorry,” he said honestly, if not for the reason she thought.

She shook her head. “Not your fault. I’m a little jumpy today, is all,” she admitted. “I wasn’t expecting you today. Did you finish the book already?”

“Yes,” he lied effortlessly. “I couldn’t put it down. You told me it was one of your favorites, so I thought I’d drop by.” He glanced around at the stacks of books piled on the tables. “But I see you’re busy. I can come back tomorrow night.”

Before he could move so much as an inch toward the door, Belle reached out a hand to stop him. “No, don’t - don’t go,” she said hastily. “It’s so quiet in here that it’s got me a bit on edge. I know libraries are supposed to be quiet, but I’ve never been in one so  _ empty.” _ She shivered, rubbing her upper arms to warm them. “But, um… if you have nothing else planned, I’d really like the company,” she added with a shy smile.

He should say no. He could come up with an excuse to be on his way, and never darken her door again. But in this, he was weak.

“I’d like that,” he said.

“Great!” she cried with an excited clap of her hands. She rested her hand on a small metal cart piled high with books. “Tell you what: let me run these downstairs to the stacks quickly. Once I’m back, you can tell me what you thought about the book while I finish reshelving all of these.”

He glanced bemusedly around at the stacked books on the long reading tables. There had to be hundreds of books pulled from their places on the shelves. How had the room come to be in such a state? And more importantly… “Isn’t there anyone here who can help you?” he asked.

She rolled her eyes. “Not today, apparently,” she muttered. “I got called in on my day off because we were ‘short-staffed.’ Which  _ apparently _ means, ‘entirely unstaffed except for Belle.’ I got here two hours ago to an absolute mess.” She sighed, gesturing frustratedly to the surrounding tables. “I came here to all these books in a jumbled up pile. I’ve spent the whole time sorting through them so I can put them away quickly. Thankfully, the library’s been quiet all night.”

The wheels in his mind started to turn at this new information. “Just how many patrons have you had since you got here?” he asked quietly.

Tapping her lip thoughtfully, she said, “Well, none, I suppose. Maybe I used up all my bad luck for one day, and the universe cut me a break. You came to keep me company, after all.” She flushed prettily, grabbing the handle of the cart and pushing it before he could stammer out a reply. “A-anyway, let me take care of these and I’ll be right back.”

Gold watched Belle go, mulling over what she’d said. He frowned. Come to think of it, he’d never seen the library so empty before. There were always patrons wandering the stacks, tourists snapping pictures of the art on the walls, and students poring over reference materials in the reading room. Even on quieter days, there were other librarians bustling about the place. But today the library was utterly abandoned, with the exceptions of himself and Belle. That wasn’t just unlikely; it was impossible.

It was a trap, he realized, cursing himself for not seeing it sooner. Someone, somehow had wanted to get him alone. They’d observed him long enough to gather that there were four places that he frequented: his home, his shop, The Continental, and the library. Nobody with a brain in their head would attack a man of his talents in his own home or place of business, knowing that even a man long out of the game would always be prepared for just such an eventuality. And anyone caught conducting “business” on Continental grounds incurred a harsh penalty. That only left the library. And clearly whomever had been following him had known that lovely Belle French would be the perfect bait.

He cursed his carelessness. How had he missed someone tailing him? He knew the telltale signs, knew exactly what to look for when someone wanted to follow a target unobserved. For him to miss something like that for… weeks? Months?... beggared belief. He was better than that, damn it! 

There was no sense bemoaning something that had already happened. He’d let his guard down, somehow, and Belle was in danger as a result. She would  _ not _ pay the price for his negligence.

Maybe it wasn’t too late. He could convince Belle to close the library early, go home. Then he would wait here, in the reading room, for the jaws of the trap to snap shut around him. He just had to hope that whoever was stupid enough to target him was also young and inexperienced. Nobody who had spent any significant amount of time in their circle would dare to touch Gold without a damn good incentive. Unfortunately for him, he could think of a handful of enemies he’d made over the years who were more than willing to pay handsomely to see his head on a spike.

It didn’t matter, he supposed. He would survive, or he wouldn’t. Either way, he’d make damn sure that Belle was safe. That was paramount to all else.

She’d said she was bringing the books to the stacks, which were on the first floor. Which meant going back down all those stairs, and then climbing them once again. His ankle was already stiff; after going up and down so many steps, it would be throbbing. He could ill afford to have it seize up on him when his life was on the line. But what choice did he have?

Limping slowly down the stairs, he gave his brace another quick tweak when it slipped, the metal digging uncomfortably into his foot. He needed to replace it soon; this one was decades old, the worn leather no longer holding its shape as it once had. As he straightened, the sound of men’s voices drifted in from the stacks. 

He froze. Perhaps it was nothing. The library was still open, after all. Could he have been mistaken? Was it possible that all of it - the lack of patrons, the mess in the reading room, the absence of Belle’s coworkers - was all a coincidence? 

The sound of a frightened, feminine yelp put paid to the notion. Belle. The men must have found her in the stacks. Was that the game? To take her as a hostage so Gold would exchange his own life for hers? If so, he had to admit, the strategy was a good one. In all his years, he’d never deemed a single thing worthy of sacrificing himself for. He had no family, no true friends, no lovers who wouldn’t knife him in the back without qualms if the price was right. But for Belle he’d gladly give his life. Whoever thought to use her as bait, they had Gold’s grudging respect for knowing his weakness better than he did.

But that respect wouldn’t save them.

He crept silently through the floor-to-ceiling metal bookcases of the stacks, following the sound of voices. When he was one row of shelves over, he paused to observe, peering through the gap between the two shelves.

There were three of them, two of them armed with pistols. One of the armed men covered the entrance of the aisle between bookcases, his gun carelessly held pointing downward at his side. The other had the muzzle of his trained on Belle. The third man, presumably the leader of the trio, had Belle pinned against the far wall. 

Not assassins, as he’d suspected. People in his former vocation had an air of dignity and professionalism that these three lacked. With their leather jackets, greasy, unkempt hair and relaxed demeanor, these were no more than common thugs. No wonder they’d felt confident taking him on; they likely had no idea who he was.

He’d have to see about finding out who had hired them. Sending untested amateurs after a killer of his caliber? He’d be insulted if he weren’t so worried for Belle.

“Please, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Belle pleaded, her voice frightened yet steady. “I don’t know anyone named G--” A loud slap of flesh on flesh interrupted her.

“Don’t play stupid with me,” the leader snarled. 

Belle flinched away as spittle landed on her face. “I wouldn’t dream of it,” she said coolly. “When I play a game, I play to win. I wouldn’t stand a chance against you.”

The man chuckled smugly. The arrogant smirk quickly faded from his face as the meaning of her words sank in. With his free hand, he backhanded her across the cheek, wrenching a pained cry from her. Fury blazed hot in Gold’s chest, and he suppressed the urge to burst in, tear the man’s hand off, and cram it down his throat whole. Anger wasn’t needed here. One of the two armed men still had his gun trained on Belle. If he had an itchy trigger finger, any rash action Gold took could result in Belle getting hurt. Or killed.

The man pointing his gun at Belle spoke up. “Christ, Keith, don’t ugly her up too much. You don’t wanna piss him off.”

The man pinning Belle - Keith, apparently - waved his hand dismissively. “What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” he muttered. His attention turned back to Belle. “You had to know he’d come for you eventually,” he continued. “He’s a very possessive man, after all. Doesn’t like when his things get away from him.”

Belle’s chin tilted up proudly. “I am  _ not _ a thing,” she said quietly. “And if he wants me, he can come and get me himself.”

_ I will, Belle. Just hold on, sweetheart, _ Gold promised silently as he retreated without a sound, fighting down the panic that rose up in his chest. He needed to come up with a plan, fast, before these idiots did something to hurt Belle. If they did, they’d live just long enough to regret it.

First things first: he needed to separate the two armed men from Belle. Casting his eyes about for a distraction - something attention-grabbing, that wouldn’t set them on edge or otherwise startle them - he eventually settled on the call bell on the circulation desk. Tapping the button with his palm sent a chime ringing out through the library. He waited patiently, feet planted in a wide stance with both hands clasping the golden handle of his cane. A two inch thick hardcover encyclopedia volume was tucked under one arm.

The thugs’ voices carried just far enough for Gold to hear them, but not well enough for him to make out what was said. After a few moments of arguing, silence reigned over the library once more. Then, the dull sound of booted footsteps slowly approached. Gold recognized the armed man who rounded the corner as the one who had been covering their exit. Which meant that Belle likely still had a gun pointed at her. This man needed to be taken down in silence.

“Yeah?” the man asked sullenly. “What d’you want, old man? Library’s closed.”

Gold blinked. He’d expect a man who just came face to face with the dangerous killer he was supposed to murder to react more… well… just  _ more. _ He’d be offended if the little shit’s sulky indifference weren’t so damn convenient.

The man glanced impatiently over his shoulder where he’d left his fellow thugs, as though eager to rejoin them. Gold amended his initial assessment. The man didn’t seem even slightly inclined to attack. This idiot didn’t even realize whom it was he was facing.

Something about this didn’t add up. Either this was the sloppiest assassination attempt he’d ever seen, or things weren’t as they seemed. But Belle was in danger. Figuring out who the hell was trying to kill him - and why they’d botched it so badly - could wait.

He wiped a hand over his mouth to hide the vicious grin on his face. Twisting it into the disarming smile of a simple old man, he rested more weight on his cane than was strictly necessary. “This is rather embarrassing, but I seem to have fallen asleep while I was reading. I need to get home, but I really don’t want to put my book down. Might I ask you to check it out for me?” He held the thick book out to the man, who didn’t take it.

A confused expression bloomed slowly across the man’s face. “I don’t… I mean, I’m not… Uh…”

Gold took advantage of the stupid man’s confusion to slowly hobble forward, careful to exaggerate the uselessness of his ankle. “There’s a scanner just next to you. Just scan my card, scan the book, and I can be on my way. If you please.” The idiot stared at him for a long moment, then picked up the scanner.  _ That’s it, _ Gold thought.  _ There’s nothing to concern yourself with. Just a doddering old man who’s lost his way. _ “By the way,” he said nonchalantly, watching the man struggle with the library’s computer system. While his foe was distracted, Gold slowly hooked his cane on the edge of the desk. “Did you touch her?”

Horrified brown eyes rose from the computer screen to stare at him. “What?” he asked stupidly.

Gold’s right hand shot out, his hand wrapping around the man’s throat. The man’s jaw worked as he tried to call out, but Gold’s grip on his windpipe was too tight. The pistol dropped from nerveless fingers. Bloody amateur. Who in God’s name hired these bunglers?

“I’m going to let you breathe in a second,” he growled. “If you scream, or call for help, or so much as breathe louder than I see fit, I will rip your throat out with my bare fucking hands. Understood?” 

He nodded jerkily, as much as Gold’s iron grip allowed..

“Good.” He eased his grip slightly - enough to allow air to wheeze through the man’s throat, but not enough to let him catch his break properly. “Now. Did you lay a hand on Miss French?”

“Who…” The man attempted to cough, but Gold didn’t allow him the luxury. “Who’s Miss French?”

“The woman your colleagues are holding hostage in the stacks. Did. You. Touch. Her?”

“N-no,” he croaked. “Just… just Keith.”

“Wonderful. Then your death will be quick.” He relinquished his hold on the man’s throat. Starving for breath, the man’s reaction times were slowed; before he could reach for the gun he’d dropped on the desk, Gold had already swept it aside. He grabbed the man around the back of the head and mercilessly slammed his forehead into the unyielding surface of the wooden desk. Dazed, the man couldn’t so much as call out in alarm. With practiced, efficient movements, Gold rammed the thug’s forehead down two more times with one hand while the other stood the encyclopedia volume up on the desk. Grabbing the stunned, unresisting man by the hair, he positioned his neck over the book’s edge. With his teeth bared in a savage grimace, he brought his elbow down on the man’s head with all the strength he could muster, relishing the sickening  _ crunch _ as the man’s neck snapped. Legs giving out underneath him, the thug dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes, dead before he even hit the floor.

One down. Two to go.

Slipping silently through the stacks, Gold heard the remaining two men arguing.

“Jesus, Keith, would you stop thinking with your dick for once? You know he’ll fucking kill you if he catches wind of this!”

“Shut the hell up. Why don’t you go see what’s taking Charlie so fucking long? I can’t get it up with you watching. Just give me twenty minutes.”

“But--”

"I said fuck off!” Keith snapped. “And leave the gun. If she struggles again, I’ll blow her damn head off.”

Gold saw red. Jaw clenched in fury, his feet carried him to the aisle where Belle was being held captive. His eyes darted between the two men. The nameless man, now unarmed, stopped in his tracks as Gold came into view. He glanced over his shoulder at his friend, Keith. Keith, the greasy-haired man who had his hand up Belle’s skirt. Gold’s control snapped.

Two things happened simultaneously. Tossing his cane up and catching it around the middle, Gold hooked the handle on the nameless man’s shoulder, yanking him forward off-balance. And the man assaulting Belle yelped in pain and surprise.

“The bitch bit me!”

Fueled by white-hot rage, Gold brought his cane down on the nameless man’s head again and again until the handle was bloodied and the man stopped moving. And then he beat the man some more, just for good measure.

The click of a pistol hammer pulled him from his frenzy of anger. Slowly, cautiously, he looked up from the nameless man’s corpse.

Keith had his back to the wall, Belle pinned to his chest, with the muzzle of his pistol held to her temple. His lower lip was bloodied where Belle had bitten him. The whites of his eyes showed as his eyes darted about, metaphorical hackles raised like a cornered animal. It seemed the young pup wasn’t accustomed to being cornered by a higher class of predator. 

Belle glanced between Gold’s face, the bloodied handle of his cane, and the man he killed crumpled at his feet. Her eyes were wide in her pale face, her breath coming in quick, panting gasps. Ignoring the dull ache in his chest, Gold averted his eyes from hers. He couldn’t afford to let his feelings distract him. Not until he was sure that she was safe.

“Stay the fuck back, or I’ll splatter her brains all over her precious books,” Keith yelled, voice cracking shrilly.

Gold stopped dead, not daring to move a muscle. “You really don’t want to do that,” he warned.

“Yeah, no fucking shit! She’s no good to either of us dead, is she?” His eyes dropped to Gold’s hand. “Drop the cane,” he said.

Mind racing, Gold considered what to say. He had little experience deescalating situations like these. As a Broker, his dealings under the Table had a veneer of civility to cover the brutality of the criminal underworld. Weapons were rarely drawn, and never by the dealing parties. After all, there were rules to be followed. Outright murder of a fellow businessman would be dealt with swiftly and decisively by the hands of the High Table. No, the enlightened way to handle irreconcilable differences was to simply hire a third party to…  _ eliminate _ the competition. Preferably in private, where there were no witnesses.

In situations like this, with weapons drawn and lives on the line, he preferred to  _ escalate _ rather than deescalate. A frightened, angry man - especially one as stupid as this one - was more likely to make a critical error, one that Gold would ruthlessly exploit without hesitation. But with a gun pressed to Belle’s head, he was taking no chances.

He had one chance to make this work. This man, Keith, would want to escape with his life. If he had two brain cells to rub together, he’d realize that Belle’s death would only secure his own. He needed to go along with Keith’s demands, let the idiot think he was going to leave this building in one piece. If he was smart, he’d shoot Gold in the head and be done with it.

Gold fervently hoped he was as dumb as he looked.

“Alright,” he said, holding his free hand out placatingly. “I’m letting it go now.” He released the handle of his cane, letting it clatter to the floor.

“Kick it to me.”

Balancing on his good foot, Gold kicked the cane over with his bad. It skittered across the floor, the handle leaving a trail of blood on the tile. The man stared at it for a moment consideringly. But with one hand pinning Belle to his chest and the other holding the gun to her head, he had none to spare to pick it up.

“Good. Now back up.”

Leaning heavily on the bookcase to keep weight off his bad ankle, he hobbled to the very end of the aisle. 

“Keep going.”

Gold glanced helplessly over his shoulder. “My ankle won’t support my weight,” he said. “If I go any further without my cane, I’ll fall.”

Keith’s face twisted in a petty smirk. “Even better. Keep going, old man.”

Gold gave one last glance to Belle, who was watching him with a concerned expression on her face. He wondered what brought it about. Could she be worried about him? More likely, she feared for her own life, with a killer at her back and another one ten feet in front of her.

Hazarding a step past the end of the bookcase, he dropped to the ground with a pained cry. His hands shot to his bad ankle as Keith laughed uproariously at the plight of a pathetic, crippled old man. In his distraction, the thug didn’t even notice as Gold’s fingers slipped into the custom made leather brace, palming one of the black and gold throwing knives tucked within. He was completely oblivious as Gold took careful aim and, with precise movements, threw the knife.

The knife hit its mark, striking Keith’s hand hard enough to knock the pistol to the floor. The blade didn’t stick in his hand - Gold was a bit rustier than he’d realized - but it left a deep gash where it sliced him. Belle, the clever girl, took advantage of his diversion to elbow Keith in the stomach and wrench herself free of his grasp. Winded, the younger, stupider man collapsed to his knees.

With a speed that belied his age and his old injury, Gold was upon him, the second knife from his brace already in hand. Forcing Keith’s mouth open, he inserted the knife and pressed the blade against his inner cheek just hard enough to hurt. Keith froze, holding himself very, very still.

“You’re going to answer my questions now,” Gold informed him in a low voice. “How well you answer determines whether I’ll let you keep your tongue. Understood?”

Keith started to nod, stopped as the knife cut into his cheek, and whimpered an affirmative.

“Good. Now: who sent you?”

“Novhody.” 

Gold’s hand twitched, jerking the blade slightly. A rivulet of red ran through the saliva coating the gold blade. “Who sent you?” he repeated, keeping his voice even.

“Novhody! I’m zhust here for the boundy, that’sh all.” His voice slurred as his mouth worked gingerly around the blade. Gold had no trouble understanding; this was one of his favorite ways to extract information from a target.

He frowned. Bounty? Someone had put out a contract for his life? That made no sense. As a Broker, he was above the common rabble of the world’s criminal underbelly. Thieves, assassins, extractors, hunters - none would cross him without damn good reason. 

Of course, he was far from untouchable. He wasn’t Management, after all. But Management wouldn’t put a bounty on his head without first excommunicating him from The Continental and all the protections and privileges it provided. That only left the highest authority - the High Table itself. Surely he hadn’t managed to piss one of them off. He’d broken no rules. Bent them to suit his whims, yes - just as everyone else under the Table did. But broken them entirely? No. He wasn’t that stupid.

Something was wrong. Something was very wrong, and somehow Belle had gotten caught up in it. He needed to get this sorted as soon as possible, before someone with a modicum of competence figured out Belle’s association with Gold and came after her.

First, he needed to know just how big a threat was looming over him. “The contract. Is it open? Closed? Exclusive?”

“Closhed,” Keith said. “He doeshn’t want word of thish getting out.”

“Who is  _ he? _ ” Gold hissed. “Who put out the contract?”

Keith shook his head with a pathetic moan, not even seeming to care when the blade bit into him again. “I can’t tell you, he’ll kill me,” he whimpered.

“No he won’t,” Gold promised.  _ Because I’m going to kill you first, _ he added silently.

“You can’t shtop him,” Keith slurred. “Nobody can shtop him. If he findsh out I failed… if he findsh out what I did… Oh god…”

Suddenly, he jerked free, the knife cutting through his cheek like butter. He lunged for the pistol on the floor before Gold could stop him, raised it to his own head, and pulled the trigger. 

_ BLAM! _

Gold flinched back from the splatter with a sigh. Fuck. This suit was  _ brand new. _ If he’d known that the evening’s proceedings were going to be so messy, he would have worn the suit with the slight fraying at the left cuff. As it was, this stain was never going to come out. 

And on the subject of cleanup, there were three corpses in the library that couldn’t be here when it opened up in the morning. He needed to get a cleanup crew here, ASAP. He reached into his interior jacket pocket for his coin wallet, checking the remaining coins for the second time that night. Only two remained. Not enough to remove three corpses.

But he had his cache - the emergency supplies that had brought him to the library for the first time months ago. Hopefully no one had found it where he’d hidden it.

He retrieved his knife, slipping both back into their slots in his ankle brace, and picked up his cane. That done, he stepped out of the stacks to find Belle standing at the circulation desk, staring at the man with the snapped neck. At his approach she turned to face him, taking a step back and eyeing him warily.

The sight of fear in her eyes - fear of  _ him _ \- sent a pang of heartache through him. She had every right - every reason - to hear him. But that didn’t make it hurt any less. _God, Belle, please don't fear me._

“I’m not going to hurt you, Miss French,” he said softly, addressing her formally in the way he always did to remind himself that she would never -  _ could _ never - be his. Tonight had made that crystal clear. He reached a hand out, hoping to reassure her, but quickly pulled it back with a wince. Fuck, he had blood on his hands. Hands this filthy had no right to comfort someone as pure as Belle. Leaning against the circulation desk, he produced his pocket square from his breast pocket and started the task of meticulously cleaning the blood and gore from his hands.

Belle, being the good creature she was, stepped forward and took the cloth from him and took over, her hands soft and cool on his own. “You… you killed all three of them?” she asked softly.

“The first two,” he admitted. “The third, the one who almost…” He swallowed, unable to give words to what he’d been about to do to her. “He shot himself.”

Something glimmered in her eyes for a split second, there and gone before he could figure out what it was. “Did they hurt you?” she asked, her eyes raking over him.

“No.”

She nodded in satisfaction, then frowned. “There were three of them, and you just killed them? Just like that?”

Shame and anger burned low in his belly. He’d never wanted Belle to see this side of him. If he had his way, that part of him would have always been kept separate from their friendship. But to hear her condemn him for actions he’d taken to save her…  _ stung. _ As far as he was concerned, every life he’d ever taken was worth it for the one he’d saved tonight. “I did what I had to,” he bit out.

She shook her head. “No, I meant… It was that easy? To take down three armed men who were all bigger than you, without getting a single scratch?” Her perceptive blue eyes bored into his. “You’re more than just an antiques dealer, aren’t you?” Finishing her task, she gave him his pocket square back. He used it to wipe off the handle of his cane before tucking it back in his pocket.

He sighed raggedly. “That’s a long, complicated story. One that shouldn’t be told here.” He gestured to the dead body just a few feet away from them. “I need to make a call to take care of them, and then I need you to come with me.”

She frowned at him distrustingly, taking a step back. “Why?” she asked.

“Because whoever sent those three after me seems to know about how I… about my… they know about you,” he explained, cheeks heating at what he’d nearly inadvertently revealed to her. “I need to get you someplace safe, someplace where they can’t come after you to get to me.”

Understanding bloomed across her features. “Okay,” she decided. “I trust you.”

She shouldn’t. She had no reason to trust him. He knew that he’d rather take a bullet than see her hurt, but she had no way of knowing just how deep his affection for her ran. Or of just how much darkness he was capable.

“I just need to fetch something and make a call, and then we can be on our way,” he said. 

“I’ll come with you.”

He nodded and led her back into the stacks. After a quick perusal of the bookcases, he found what he was looking for: a thick, hardbound volume of Scottish fairy tales and folklore. Flipping the cover open revealed that the inside had been hollowed out. Inside were four large gold coins identical to the ones in his coin wallet, and a large silver disc with a needle-sharp point protruding from its edge. The face of it was covered in elaborate scrollwork, with a skull at its center. He tucked his findings into his interior pocket.

“Did… did you  _ ruin _ that  _ book _ ?” Belle demanded, sounding more affronted than when she’d asked if he’d murdered three men.

He suppressed the urge to roll his eyes affectionately at her skewed priorities - but only just. “I checked the checkout sheet in the back cover. It hasn’t been taken out since the seventies,” he assured her.

“Still, it’s the principle of the thing. What if someone wanted to read it?”

“Then they would have found something infinitely more valuable inside,” he replied. She looked unconvinced. “Now, I have an important call to make. We need to take care of the… mess… before we can get going.” She nodded wordlessly as he pulled out his phone, dialing the familiar number from memory. He hadn’t used it in nearly a decade, but the number never changed, and the mind never forgot.

_ “Specialized Waste Disposal.” _

“This is Gold. I’d like to make a dinner reservation for three.”


	3. Ignis Aurum Probat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another pun-tastic Latin title. I'll probably make a lot of these.

It took under five minutes for the Specialized Waste Disposal van to pull up in front of the library building. For her safety, Gold had suggested that Belle keep hidden in the reading room while the cleaners set about their work. The fewer people who knew about her association with him, the safer she would be. Belle hadn’t argued, seeming eager to be away from the corpses of the men who had taken her hostage.

That was good. The less exposure she had to the dark, brutal world into which he’d carved himself a place, the better. If he could, he would send her home and never darken her life with his presence again. But until he found out who had put out a contract for his life, he couldn’t leave her alone and vulnerable. Someone had an inkling of just how much Belle meant to him, and he highly doubted that Keith had the brains to figure that out on his own, even before he’d saved Gold the trouble of splattering them among the stacks. 

He needed to get to the bottom of this quickly, before it had the chance to snuff out her inner light. Then she could move on with her life and do her best to forget the day that Rumford Gold had foolishly let himself fall for her, a victim of her unwitting snare.

The heartbreak would probably kill him, if someone else didn’t get the job done first.

As always, the burly men who made up the local cleanup crew were the very essence of professionalism; they knew the value of promptness, efficiency, and an exhaustive attention to detail. They had the three bodies collected, wrapped up and stacked in the back of the van in short order, taking particular care to ensure that they didn’t miss a single tooth Gold had beaten out of one man’s head with his cane. Without a hint of squeamishness or reluctance, they scrubbed the stacks clean of all traces of blood, even down to the spines of the books that had been dirtied by Keith’s spatter. By the time Gold was pressing three gold coins - one for each corpse - into the palm of the van’s driver, it was as though the whole evening had never happened.

If only it were so easy to wipe all traces of this night from Belle’s mind, Gold mused as he made his slow, limping way up the steps toward the reading room. Surely any affection she might have had for him would be gone, now that she’d seen him beat a man to death in a blind rage. 

And that was for the best. Fancies of a future with Belle - even if that future involved nothing more than evening visits in the library to discuss literature - were nothing more than pretty dreams. It was time for him to wake up. He would keep Belle close just long enough to get her someplace safe, someplace where she could hide away while he sought the man who had put a price on his head. 

Approaching the closed wooden door of the reading room, Gold rapped on it sharply. “You can come out now, Miss French,” he called.

The door opened little more than a crack, a lovely blue eye peeking warily out at him. “They’re gone?” she asked.

“The bodies have been removed, yes,” he confirmed. “You don’t need to worry about anyone finding out what happened here tonight. The men I hired are… thorough. And discreet.”

Reassured, Belle swung the door open the rest of the way, revealing the enormous room behind her. She’d been busy in the past half hour, managing to reshelve roughly half the books stacked on the tables. “Normally I wouldn’t leave a mess for whoever’s opening in the morning,” she explained unnecessarily, “but I really don’t want to stay here any longer.”

“I understand.” 

Of course she’d want to leave as soon as possible. She’d been through a harrowing ordeal; she’d witnessed a man dying tonight. A person’s first stayed with them their whole life. Over the past four decades, Gold had witnessed countless deaths, at his hands and the hands of others. He couldn’t remember the faces or names of the majority of his victims; they all blended together in a mass of screaming, crying, begging, raging, and desperate bargaining. But he still remembered the first death he’d ever witnessed as though it were only yesterday. The sight of those pleading, terrified eyes would haunt him for the rest of his days.

Now he and Belle had something in common, and it was because of him. He swallowed hard against the nausea rising in his stomach.

“Mr. Gold? Are you okay?” she asked, 

“Fine.” He jerked his head toward the door. “Come on. We need to get out of here.”

Belle nodded. “Where are we going?” she asked.

“My shop,” he replied as they hurried down the stairs as quickly as the growing stiffness in his ankle would allow. Faking that fall for Keith’s benefit earlier had put some strain on the damaged joint. The pain was manageable, but if it took too much more punishment he would be useless for the rest of the night.

“And I’ll be safe there?” 

Gold remained silent until they reached the ground level before turning to face Belle. Her eyes were wide and frightened, her arms wrapped around her small leather purse, clutching it close to her stomach as if it could offer her some comfort. He wanted so badly to offer her the reassurance she was clearly asking for. But he couldn’t allow her to let her guard down. Not until he was sure she was safe.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Someone is after me, I know that much. Someone who likely won't stop until I’m dead. Anywhere I go, danger won’t be far behind.” 

Belle chewed nervously on her lower lip. Her eyes lowered to her sensible, low-heeled shoes, so different from her usual towering heels. “So why are we going there?” she asked.

He sighed quietly as they slipped out the door, Belle pausing to lock up behind them. Of course she had questions. Belle had an insatiable thirst for knowledge. No doubt if she discovered that she’d been inadvertently embroiled in a conflict among a secret criminal underworld whose network spanned the globe, she’d inundate him with questions to learn every last thing she could. He couldn’t allow her to learn too much, lest she find herself forced into a lifestyle from which there was no escape but death. He knew as well as anyone that once you found yourself under the Table, there was no crawling out; something was always waiting in the dark to drag you back in.

He needed to handle her questions delicately. Satisfy her curiosity without whetting her appetite for more. It was just for now, he reasoned. Just until he could get her someplace safe.

“I need to collect a few things. I didn’t exactly prepare myself for… all of this.” He gestured around them vaguely. “Once I’m better prepared to deal with what comes, I can make some calls. Find a place for you to hide. Now come on. My car is just down the street.” With his free hand, he guided her forward by the elbow, his hand not quite touching the soft-looking blue fabric of her cardigan.

Once he had her tucked safely - safely enough, at any rate - in his car, he took the wheel and drove toward his shop by rote. The familiarity of the route allowed him to process what had happened, and figure out his next move.

For the second time that night, he cursed King and Midas for the months they’d spent wasting his time quibbling over trivialities. If they’d just signed the damn contract already, he’d have been paid, and could have moved on to other projects. He’d have a dozen more gold coins at his disposal, to say nothing of the amount he might have earned if his attention had been free to pursue other ventures. As it was, he was left with a mere three coins in the leather pouch in his interior jacket pocket: the two he’d already had with him, and the one left over from his cache after he’d paid off the men who so thoroughly cleaned up the mess he’d made in the library.

Money wasn’t the issue. Financially, he was more than well-off from his younger years spent eliminating  _ problems _ for his employers. He had enough money stored in offshore bank accounts to keep him comfortable for several lifetimes, and fake IDs and passports if he ever needed to disappear on short notice. In fact, that had been his plan, should he ever find himself targeted as he was now: to leave behind the life of Rumford Gold, former assassin, and live out the rest of his days in quiet, dull obscurity.

Belle’s involvement complicated matters. Without falsified documents, she couldn’t disappear as he could. And he’d be damned if he’d leave her to the sharks while he whiled away his days in some obscure hamlet nobody had ever heard of. He needed to protect her, but he lacked the means with which to do so.

The coins. It all came back to the bloody gold coins that served as the chief form of currency in his world. With enough of those coins, he could do anything. He could buy himself a bloody arsenal. He could buy Belle a new identity and spirit her away someplace where nobody knew his name. Or the best option yet - he could put her up in The Continental until all of this blew over. The hotel was the safest place she could possibly be; even an idiot like Keith wouldn’t dare shed blood on Continental grounds.

But he only had three. That would buy her three nights of safety, leaving him with nothing - no supplies, no allies, no information,  _ no time. _ With three days and no other resources at his disposal, the best he could hope to do was lead his pursuers on a merry chase through the city, taking out as many of them as he could before his time was up.

There had to be another way. He needed to  _ think. _ He needed - 

“Mr. Gold?”

Belle’s voice broke him out of his thoughts. He realized with a start that they were parked in front of his shop. When the hell had that happened? He couldn’t remember a moment of the drive, much less pulling up in front of his shop. Careless. When had he gotten so  _ careless? _

Belle’s hand drifted to her door’s latch. 

“Wait!” His own hand shot out to stop her, hovering millimeters away from her arm. He fancied he could feel the heat of her in the chill autumn air. 

Startled blue eyes met his own. “What? Is it… are there more of them?” 

She looked around frantically, and Gold cursed internally. If they were being watched, she’d just let anyone targeting them know that they were alert and ready. It was his own fault for startling her. He needed to remind himself that all of this - the danger, the subterfuge, the paranoia - was foreign to her. It was so deeply ingrained in his psyche that sometimes he forgot that there were people who had the luxury of living without looking constantly over their shoulders.

He tried to keep his voice as calm as he could. “Stop looking around,” he murmured, waiting for her to comply. “Good. Now take your phone out, and pretend you just got a call.”

Belle rummaged around through her purse, pulling out a few items in search of her phone: a worn wallet, a compact mirror, a designer sunglasses case, a handful of receipts. Finally, she produced her phone with a triumphant cry, and started up an imaginary one-sided conversation. He feigned a sigh and an impatient look at his companion. Belle, sharp as always, picked up on his ruse immediately, gesturing to him with one finger as if to say “just a minute.” To outside eyes, they were just a typical couple: a man waiting impatiently for his partner to get off the phone so they could go inside. While she chattered about a book - Gold recognized it as the one he’d been about to return tonight - he took the opportunity to slowly take in their surroundings. 

The sun had set hours ago, but the street lights offered more than enough illumination for him to see every person loitering on the street near his shop. A group of six… no, seven short, stout men ambled slowly past his shop, talking amongst themselves without sparing the Cadillac or its passengers a single glance. Down the street a ways, a woman with a sleek waterfall of black hair, wearing a black leather jacket, was snogging her auburn-haired girlfriend. Across the street, a man in a tweed suit was walking his Dalmatian, an umbrella clenched in the fist that didn’t hold the dog’s leash. He looked distinctly uncomfortable being out on the street late at night.

None of them seemed particularly suspicious. Which meant nothing; any decent contracted professional knew how to blend seamlessly in with a crowd. If that group of men attacked, he’d be outnumbered seven to one. If an assault came from the two women necking down the street, their greater agility could do him in - to say nothing of any weapons that they might be concealing. As for the man in tweed, the umbrella in his hand was of sturdy make. Gold knew from firsthand experience how easily an umbrella or cane could be weaponized. And that dog. An old acquaintance of his specialized in training Dalmatians as attack dogs. This could very well be one of them.

Or he might just be being paranoid. The men had passed his shop without a glance, and were already several meters down the street. They clearly weren’t interested in him. The lesbian couple seemed completely unaware of their surroundings, completely swept up in one another. And the meek-looking red haired man was probably an ordinary man, walking an ordinary dog. 

Whether these were average pedestrians or fellow contractors lying in wait for a vulnerable moment didn’t matter; he needed to get into his shop. He would accomplish nothing by sitting in his car and dithering.

He signaled to her to end her fake call. She quickly tucked her phone back into her purse. “We’re getting out of the car now,” he told her, still keeping his tone low and soothing. “I don’t think we’re being watched, but there’s no way to be sure. Get out of the car and walk toward my shop. Move quickly, but  _ act natural.” _

“Alright.” They both climbed out of the car, Gold more slowly than Belle due to needing to get his cane under him first. She circled round the car to meet him in the front, curling her hand around his forearm as though he were a gentleman escorting a lady on a date, instead of a cold-blooded killer trying to protect her from a deadly situation of his own making. The press of her hand on his arm, even through the layers of his jacket and shirt, set his heart racing in his chest. The urge to push her away for the sake of his sanity warred with the desire to pull her closer, to let her soft warmth seep into his icy veins.

In the end, he did neither. Belle had the right idea; it was best to keep up appearances for now. Digging through his trouser pocket, he produced his keys, sliding the correct one into the lock. It turned smoothly - too smoothly. The door, it seemed, was already unlocked.

Shit. Someone was already in the shop, and he had nothing with which to defend himself except two knives and a cane. He glanced surreptitiously over his shoulder. All of the people he’d observed in the area had moved on, leaving the street oddly deserted. 

He couldn’t worry about that now. Someone was in his shop, lying in wait for him. Lifting his bad leg as subtly as possible, he eased a knife out of his ankle sheath, inch by inch, palming it discreetly. 

“Stay behind me,” he cautioned Belle as he eased the door open, lifting it in such a way that the bell overhead didn’t chime at his entrance. Creeping soundlessly through the darkened front of his shop, he strained his ears for any trace of an unwelcome guest. Sure enough, he could hear someone in the back, rummaging through papers and grumbling under their breath.

Gesturing without looking behind him for Belle to stay near the door in case they needed to make a quick egress, Gold slid through the shop without a sound, pressing his back to the wall next to the doorway leading to the back room. This close, he could hear the clacking footsteps of a woman’s feet in heels, followed by the clicking of the dial of the large, black, fireproof safe that housed the tools of his trade. Currently, there was nothing of particular value within. The fake IDs he’d commissioned in case a change of identity was needed. The antique typewriter he used to type up contracts. A hard copy of whichever bargain or treaty he was drawing up for a client. The gold-nibbed Montblanc Meisterstück fountain pen he brought to every signing. And finally, his best knives from his younger days, kept sharp and well maintained in the event of a rainy day.

The safe’s lock disengaged with a  _ thunk _ . Gold frowned. Why the hell was someone cracking his safe? Monetarily speaking, the most valuable item in there was the fountain pen, which was only valued at roughly one thousand dollars. The front of his shop held merchandise worth several times as much, and the antique cash register held thousands of dollars at all times. All of this was by design. With so much temptation left in plain sight, any common thief looking for a quick profit need never enter the back room.

Any person who ignored the lures in the storefront in favor of the safe was probably after something in particular. But what? The pen and typewriter were entirely unremarkable. His knives were of fine make, but not worth the chance of risking his ire. King’s and Midas’s dithering had ensured that he had few gold coins to spare - not enough to justify storing any in his safe. All that remained was the contract he was brokering between King and Midas.

His eyes widened. The contract. Could that be why he was being targeted? It made sense, in an odd way. The way the two rival businessmen refused to come to an accord, even after months of negotiations. Their demands that he take no other clients for the duration of their arbitrations, ensuring that his supply of coins would dwindle with each passing day. The timing of the attack, the day he’d sent out what he hoped would be the final revision of the contract. He hadn’t thought much of it at the time, because both parties were known for being exacting and impossible to please.

The method made sense. Take up all of his attention with trivialities. Let him grow complacent and bored. Isolate him from resources to defend himself. Then exploit a weakness and strike. As an assassin, he might have taken very similar steps to weaken and isolate a target. He used to look down on his targets with disdain for not realizing when they were being carefully maneuvered into a position of vulnerability. 

His adversary’s tactics were sound. What he didn’t understand was why he was being hunted, and by whom. Perhaps the woman in the back room could be… persuaded to talk about her employer. Muscles tensed, Gold was poised and ready to attack.

The safe slammed shut, the woman grumbling softly to herself as she stepped quickly to the doorway leading to the front of the shop. As she passed through the doorway, he struck. Dropping his cane to free a hand, he grabbed the woman by her forearm and wrenched it behind her back, shoving her bodily toward the counter and pressing her down roughly so she was bent double over it. With his other hand he slipped his knife underneath one of her red braids, to press against her throat. The woman shrieked in fear - a sound he’d heard dozens of times, every time he startled her with a sudden movement or loud noise in the back of his shop.

“Miss Frost? What the hell are you still doing here?” he demanded. “I told you to lock up and leave hours ago!”

“I-I know, and I was going to,” his assistant said, her voice shrill and shaky. “I s-sent the contract to King and Midas, just like you said. I was getting ready to leave and the phone rang. You… you told me I always have to answer the shop phone, remember?” The girl was babbling, the words pouring out of her in a panicked rush. “I got calls from both Mr. Midas and Mr. King. They wanted to… to go over the contracts and give you their revisions. They made me wait here until they finished sending them over.” She lifted her free arm to gesture toward the back room, yelping in pain when Gold jerked her pinned arm in warning. “Th-they’re in the safe, I swear! I just put them there myself. I was just about to leave for the night.”

Gold sighed in exasperation. With little more than a literal twist of her arm, his young assistant was spilling every bit of information she had. It took so little to loosen her tongue. In all his years extracting information from unwilling sources, he’d never had someone break so easily.

She was a liability, he realized. The same guileless, jumpy demeanor that assured him that she wasn’t poised for an opportunity to stick a knife in his back could just as easily be exploited and used against him. If whoever was after him - King, Midas, or some unknown party who didn’t want them coming to an alliance - got their hands on Anna Frost, they’d have access to information on him. His habits. His bank accounts. His weaknesses. He couldn’t allow that information to get fall into the wrong hands. A chill ran down his spine as he realized what he had to do.

Miss Frost’s scream rang out through the shop as he pressed the knife more firmly to her throat. A thin line of blood, fine as a papercut, formed under the blade’s edge.

“M-Mr. Gold, what are you doing?” she stammered in a small, frightened voice.

“I’m sorry, Miss Frost,” he said, and was surprised to find that he actually was. She was overly cheerful, painfully naive, and exasperatingly absent-minded. Long days going through contracts with a fine-toothed comb had become interminable in the face of her never ending chatter. But he would regret her death, necessary though it was. Though he’d been numbed to the horror of taking a life when he was still a boy, he never enjoyed killing someone who didn’t deserve it.

He couldn’t remember the faces of most of the people he’d killed. They numbered in the hundreds, spanning over the course of decades. The mind, it seemed, had ways of sparing itself from dealing with its own atrocities. But he had the feeling that his assistant’s face would be haunting his thoughts for years to come. Gritting his teeth, he tightened his grip on his knife, preparing to deliver the killing blow.

“Rumford, stop!”

Belle’s voice froze him where he stood. Miss Frost went limp in his grasp, sagging against the counter with a relieved whimper escaping her lips. 

Gold’s eyes locked with Belle’s horrified blue ones. Of the dozens of times he’d imagined Belle’s lips wrapped around his name, it had never been like this. Never shocked, frightened, pleading with him not to commit murder in front of her very eyes. And yet, here they were. He steeled himself against the pang of heartache in his chest, fixing his face into an impassive mask.

“What are you doing?” Belle demanded, blue eyes flashing in fear and anger. “You can’t kill her. She didn’t do anything!”

“She’s a risk,” he said simply, frowning as Miss Frost shuddered under his hands. Her breath came in soft, whimpering pants. It was the quietest he’d ever heard her. “She knows too much about me. And now she knows you’re here, as well. If the wrong people find her…”

“Then let her go!” Belle insisted. “Have her leave town. Or - or have her come with us. But you don’t have to kill her!” 

Gold hesitated, something in him softening at the desperate, pleading tone of Belle’s voice. Hadn’t she seen enough death for one night? For one lifetime? 

Belle must have sensed his weakening resolve, because her voice softened. “Please, Rumford. You’re better than this.”

No. He really wasn’t. But perhaps for Belle, he could pretend, just this once. Perhaps…

He didn’t get to pursue that train of thought. Pain exploded through his senses as his assistant’s foot kicked his leg out from under him - his  _ good _ leg. Without the support of his cane, the ruined joint of his injured ankle couldn’t support his weight. It buckled underneath him, bringing him to his knees. Miss Frost took advantage of his incapacitated state, running for the door with a terrified scream.

Gold’s knife took her in the back before she could reach the door. Her pained yelp nearly drowned out Belle’s horrified cry as the red-haired woman collapsed to the floor. While Gold grabbed for his cane, pushing himself to his feet with a pained hiss as he put weight on his abused ankle, Belle fell to her knees next to Miss Frost’s body, her hands fluttering helplessly over the dead woman.

There was no point, he knew. The girl was gone. The sight of his prey’s fleeing back had awakened old instincts in him harkening back to his days as a paid assassin, and the knife had left his hand before he’d even consciously decided to throw it. The blade had hit its mark dead center, as it had countless times in the past.

He flexed his foot, grimacing as pain shot up his leg. He could hardly begrudge Miss Frost for fighting for her survival; anyone in her position would. At least in running, in forcing him to act quickly, she’d ensured that her suffering wasn’t prolonged. At least he was able to give her that much.

“I made it quick,” he said quietly by way of explanation.

Belle’s head whipped around to face him, fury burning in her eyes as tears ran down her face. “That’s all you can say?” she demanded, her voice thick as she wept over a woman she’d never properly met. “You  _ made it quick? _ She didn’t do anything to deserve that!”

Gold swallowed against the churning in his stomach. The anger, disappointment, and recriminations in Belle’s eyes were too much for him to bear. Schooling his face to careful blankness, he limped to his assistant’s body, leaning heavily on his cane to spare his ankle further injury. With gentle fingers he pulled the knife free from her back, doing his best not to jostle her still form. His pocket square was already bloodied from the earlier events of the evening, but it would do to clean the blood from the blade. He wiped it clean with slow, careful movements before returning it once more to its sheath. The cloth he threw in a nearby trash bin. Once done, he turned his attention back to Belle, his gaze focusing on a point just past her left ear.

“This is the world I live in, Miss French,” he informed her stiffly. “Miss Frost is… was… a liability. I can’t protect you both. If she’d been taken by the wrong person…” 

He cut himself off. Belle didn’t need to hear about the sorts of torture Miss Frost would have endured had she fallen into the hands of his enemies. He’d spent years familiarizing himself with how to break a person, body and spirit, knew exactly the monstrous extremes others would go to in order to extract information. Though kindness hadn’t been at the forefront of his mind when he’d cut Miss Frost down, it coincided nicely with his sense of self-preservation in this instance.

Belle rose to her feet, swiping angrily at her face with the back of her hand. “So that’s it? She knew too much, so she had to die?” She took a challenging step toward him, her face tilted up to glare directly into his eyes. Fury radiated off of her in waves. “And what happens if I become a  _ liability? _ Will you kill me, too?”

Inside, his entire being recoiled at the idea of killing Belle, of allowing any harm to befall her. Belle needed to be protected at all cost. He would gladly tear the world apart if it meant allowing her to live a long, happy life, even if he had no part in it. And if circumstances forced him to choose between his life and hers… well, hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.

But he could tell her none of this. To admit as much would be to make himself vulnerable. He couldn’t afford to show that weakness. It was a moot point, anyway; now that she saw the savagery lurking underneath the polished veneer of civility, the depth of his feelings would only inspire disgust in her.

He couldn’t tell her the truth, and he wouldn’t lie to her. So he said nothing.

Belle nodded in the face of his silence, as though it confirmed some suspicion of hers. “You’re a monster,” she spat.

His face remained carefully impassive. She wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know. “You’d do well to remember that, dear.” He turned his back on her, limping around the counter. Groping underneath the counter, his hand landed on what he was looking for: the stainless steel Walther PPK he kept near the register. He ejected the magazine, checking to make sure it was loaded. Seven rounds - all bullets accounted for. Good. 

As a rule, Gold didn’t use guns. They lacked subtlety and finesse, in his opinion. The percussive noise of gunfire, the acrid smoke of burnt gunpowder, the lack of training required to strike a fatal blow… Any ignoramus could use a gun with a little basic instruction. Killing with a knife was personal, and took years of training to gain any sort of proficiency. But he needed to give Belle the ability to take care of herself in a pinch. Its small dimensions made it the perfect size for her to conceal in her purse. Keeping the muzzle pointed safely toward the floor, he returned to her side.

“Have you used one of these?” he asked.

She frowned, looking between him and the pistol. “You’re… you’re trusting me with a gun?” she asked uncertainly.

“For protection. Yes.” Leaning his cane against a nearby display case, he gripped the slide of the pistol with his newly freed hand and cocked it. “Now it’s loaded.” With his thumb, he flipped the safety switch off. “See that orange dot? That means the safety is off. Point it, pull this trigger, and the gun will do the rest for you.” He flipped the safety back on and handed the pistol to her. “Keep it in your purse. Don’t point it at  _ anything _ you don’t want to kill.”

Deliberately turning away from her, he slowly made his way to the back of his shop, feeling the weight of her eyes on his back with every step. He wondered if she… No. Belle wouldn’t. Not even to someone as deserving as him.

Limping into the back room of his shop, he shrugged out of his black, pinstriped jacket and draped it on the back of his desk chair. He stepped up to his large, fireproof safe and spun the combination on the dial by rote. The lock disengaged with a  _ clunk,  _ and he opened the door. As Miss Frost had said, the latest copy of the contract he was drawing up for Midas and King rested on the top shelf, annotations from both parties added to the margins. He ignored it. If King or Midas was behind the attempt on his life, the contract was meaningless. If a third party wanted him dead, the contract was important, but not more so than his life.

He reached into the bottom shelf, producing a black leather shoulder harness with various knife sheaths. The well-maintained leather belied the age of the thing; he hadn’t worn it in nearly twenty years, not since the injury of his ankle had forced him to find another way to utilize his talents for his old employer. He carefully slid an arm into each loop, arranging the harness carefully until it rested comfortably over his waistcoat. It fit as though he’d last worn it yesterday.

Reverently, he pulled a length of black silk from the shelf, pivoting on his heel to lay it on his desk and unfold it. One by one, he pulled each one of his knives from the safe, laying them out on the silk. A karambit - a small, curved Indonesian knife with a loop at the end of the handle that allowed for rapid, whipping slashes. A pair of push knives, their oddly-shaped grips perpendicular to the blades to allow the wielder to stab an opponent with a punch. A tactical knife, with the three inches of the blade closest to the handle sporting wicked-looking serrations. A Japanese tanto knife with a straight blade. A stiletto, with the long, slim blade that could slide easily between ribs. And finally, a trench knife, with the handle forming a set of brass knuckles for both offense and finger protection.

Each knife was custom-made to his specifications, with matching black grips and gold blades. Not real gold, of course; the softness of the metal made for useless weapons. But in his youth he’d enjoyed a certain degree of theatricality, and fancied himself clever for using blades the same color as the name he’d chosen for himself. The darkness of the handles was a nod to the silly soubriquet he’d earned under his former employer.

With almost ritualistic care, he meticulously sheathed each blade in its designated scabbard on his harness. Once done, he shrugged back into his jacket, buttoning it and smoothing out every trace of a rumple or wrinkle. Not so much as a single bulge or distension showed; the slim lines of his jacket concealed his weaponry perfectly. To the untrained eye, he was a well-dressed, unarmed man whose slightly stiff movements could be easily explained away by the cane on his hand. On a whim, he snatched his gold-tipped fountain pen from the safe before slamming the door shut, tucking it into his interior jacket pocket. It nestled in nicely among his coin wallet and the large silver Marker he’d taken from the hollowed out book in the library.

Leaning his palms against the rich cherry wood of his desk, he took a deep breath, held it for several seconds, and released it. He didn’t want to return to the front of his shop. Belle waited there, with her accusations and judgments. Additionally, Miss Frost’s body would need to be disposed of, bringing his stock of coins down to two. There would be consequences for killing his assistant, he knew. But he couldn’t worry about that just now. There was no guarantee he wouldn’t be dead by tomorrow. No sense worrying about danger on the horizon when the wolf was already at his door.

Before he could steel himself for the difficulties that waited for him in the next room - to say nothing of the dangers that lurked beyond the front door - the sound of glass breaking pulled him from his dithering. Belle’s startled yelp had him hobbling as quickly as he could through the doorway, just in time to see a large glass bottle sail through the hole in his newly-broken window. The mouth of the bottle was plugged with a length of cloth, the tip of it set alight. Gold watched, as though in slow motion, as the bottle tumbled end over end and smashed into the wall just next to him. The glass shattered at the impact, flames bursting free of its confines as the flammable liquid within caught fire. The flames licked at his left hand. Crying out in pain, he quickly patted the fire out.

Reacting by instinct more than thought, Gold tucked and rolled away from the fire that were quickly engulfing the back wall of his shop. Forcing himself to his feet, ignoring the pain screaming in his ankle, he made for the front door as fast as his condition allowed, snatching Belle’s wrist in a bruising grip and dragging her behind him. He stumbled over his assistant’s body, snarling a curse as he righted himself and yanked the door open, hurrying outside with Belle in tow.

“The car! Get in!” he shouted. 

Belle didn’t need to be told twice. She ran toward the black Cadillac, bent double to make as small a target of herself as she could. Gold followed a few steps behind, fumbling with his keys while his eyes darted around, searching frantically for whoever had thrown the molotov cocktail into his shop. There were no pedestrians in sight - just cars on the road. A beat up red pickup truck. A white florist’s van. A yellow Volkswagon Beetle. A bright red sports car of unfamiliar make, with the front passenger window rolled down. A long tube, like the barrel of a gun but longer and thinner than any rifle he’d ever seen, pointed out the window and straight towards Belle. 

“Down! Get down!” he screamed. Just in time, too. Belle dropped to the pavement with a frightened cry, just as the passenger of the sports car shot. A hypodermic dart with a neon pink stabilizer tail clinked off the side of the Cadillac right where Belle had been standing. The red sports car zoomed past, caught up in traffic and unable to pull a U-turn for another pass.

Belle and Gold both scrambled into the car, slamming the doors behind them. With hands steady from years of life-or-death situations, Gold jammed the key into the ignition and turned it. The car roared instantly to life. He slammed on the gas, swerving into the road and nearly side-swiping a little blue coupe. 

Belle sat ramrod straight in the seat beside him, wide-eyed in panic. Her breath came in short, panting gasps, her hands holding her purse in a white-knuckled grip. He needed to give her something to focus on before she worked herself into a lather.

“Keep an eye out the rearview windshield,” he instructed. “Tell me if that car is following us. Tell me if any car seems to be following us.” He would be observing through the rearview mirror, but she could spot something he’d miss.

Belle nodded. “A-alright,” she agreed.

They drove in silence for several minutes. Belle craned her neck to watch the street behind them while Gold’s eyes darted in every direction, in constant search of a new threat. After ten uneventful minutes, they both heaved a relieved sigh. It wasn’t until they left the New York City limits that Gold allowed himself to relax.

This wasn’t over, he knew. Leaving the city would solve nothing. Whoever was after him must be both desperate and powerful. No mere mob family or shady businessman would resort to something as attention-grabbing as arson to flush Gold from his shop. And a man who could afford to call such attention to himself would stop at nothing to see Gold dead.

He would need to return to the city to find the man who wanted him dead. Before he did that, he needed information, and he needed a safe place for Belle, and he needed them  _ fast. _ There was only one person he knew who could provide both on short notice. Only one within driving distance, at any rate. He needed someone both protective and paranoid. Someone who could get him the intel he needed. Someone just as merciless and skilled as he was, who would honor his word. Someone who owed him a very big favor.

He needed a man of many hats.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... Anna wasn't even supposed to make another appearance. And then when she did, she wasn't supposed to die. But, uh, yeah, I have no control over my stories. Things just happen and I have to adjust accordingly. Sorry to any Anna fans out there.


	4. Nullum Magnum Ingenium Sine Mixtura Dementiae Fuit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note to readers who haven't seen the John Wick movies, because I don't think I can get the subtext across properly: when someone is about to die, and accepts their death, they say "be seeing you" (usually to the person who killed them), and the person they're speaking to echoes the sentiment. The implication is that they'll see each other in Hell.

Belle wasn’t speaking to him.

Once the immediate threat of their attackers had passed, she’d gone limp and pliant in her seat, gifting him with a relieved smile. The quirk of his lips he’d given her in return had been strained. The skin on his left hand was red and shiny where the flames had licked it. Probably just a first degree burn. Every turn of the steering wheel sent a renewed shock of pain through the damaged tissue. If he had the luxury of time, he’d pull the car over and retrieve the first aid kit from his trunk so he could tend to the wound. As it was, he would simply need to endure the pain for now. More concerning was his ankle, which twinged painfully every time he accelerated or braked.

For a split second, as they basked together in the respite from the attempt on their lives, Gold allowed himself to hope that he hadn’t ruined their relationship entirely. But all too soon the smile fell from her face. Eyes frigid with anger, her jaw set in a stubborn line, she turned her back on him, preferring to watch the landscape pass them by through her window rather than look at him. 

Gold drove through the night while Belle dozed lightly, her head leaning against the window at an angle that was sure to give her neck a crick when she awoke. Her mouth hung slack and open in repose, her soft snores oddly soothing in the silence of the night. In dark, lonely nights in his bed, he’d often allowed himself to fantasize about what it would be like to watch her as she slept. He’d never thought to picture the snoring, or the thin line of drool that trickled slowly from the corner of her mouth. Far from being put off, he found that openness and vulnerability charming in its own way. He hadn’t allowed himself to sleep in the presence of another person in decades. Not since his days in the orphanage that turned him into the monster he was today. And here was Belle French, with a soul so untainted she was able to slip into slumber in the presence of a murderer. 

Pressing the burned palm of his hand firmly against the steering wheel served to dispel the sleep from his increasingly heavy eyes, but did nothing to decrease the quiet yearning in his heart. He passed the entire night in this way, using the pain of his injury to keep himself from nodding off. Now the sky was lightening in the gray of pre-dawn, the dim light filtering through the riot of red and gold foliage of the surrounding woods.

“What was her name?”

Years of learning how to suppress all external signs of fear or surprise were all that kept Gold from jerking on the steering wheel as Belle’s words pulled him from his thoughts. He hadn’t even heard her awaken. “Pardon?”

He pretended not to notice as she discreetly wiped at her mouth with the edge of her sleeve. “That woman you killed. She deserves to be remembered. What was her name?” Her face turned back to her window, watching the trees passing by in a blur.

The assertion that he would forget Miss Frost so easily would sting, if he hadn’t effortlessly forgotten so many others over the years. “Anna,” he said. “Anna Frost.” She nodded without a word. Her silence loosened his tongue. Unbidden, he found himself speaking of his assistant. “She was… ill-suited for the job. Talkative. Naive. Clumsy. Jumpy. And… kind. She had no business working with me.” Belle nodded again without looking away from the window. He couldn’t tell if she was agreeing with him, or prompting him to continue. “She loved winter. She’d natter on about every season as though it were her favorite, but she obviously loved the snow. Snowstorms were the only time I’d get any peace from her constant chatter. She’d linger at the windows at the front of the shop just to watch.”

Belle’s head turned then, just slightly, so that she was staring at some point between her window and the front windshield. “How did she start working for you?” she asked reluctantly.

“I advertised.” Not in the newspaper, obviously. It wouldn’t do for an ordinary civilian to inadvertently find themselves working under the Table. But their underground network had ways of getting word out when assistance was needed - whether that help came in the form of illicit deals, assassinations, or something as simple as an assistant to answer the phones, staff the storefront, and act as a go-between for her employer and his shady clientele. “Miss Frost was the last in a series of tedious interviews. She was different from the ruthless, conniving candidates I’d been questioning all day. She was enthusiastic. Eager to please. Desperate to prove to her family that she had a place under… in her family business,” he said, quickly amending what he’d been about to say.

“And you killed her,” Belle said, her tone icy.

This time, he did jerk the wheel to the right, pulling over to the side of the road. He braked slowly less out of consideration for Belle than for his ankle. “Yes,” he hissed, “I killed her. And you know what, dear? Given the chance, I’d do it all over again.” Gold couldn’t resist getting one last dig in. “And I can’t help noticing that you weren’t this broken up over the men I killed earlier last night.”

“That was different,” Belle insisted. “Those men were criminals. Anna was innocent.”

Gold scoffed. “I can assure you that Miss Frost was party to plenty of crimes. Blackmail. Extortion. Insider trading. Racketeering. Human trafficking. And yes, murder. True, she didn’t commit those crimes with her own hands, but she knew exactly who I am and what my work entails. She may not have attacked us, but she was far from  _ innocent.” _

“Oh.” She was quiet for a full minute. But it seemed that the fight hadn’t gone out of her just yet. “Still, what you did was wrong. She trusted you, and you killed her. You could have done the brave, honorable thing, but you took the coward’s way out.” 

“Yes, I did,” he agreed, his upper lip twitching in anger at being so addressed.

The silence stretched between them for several minutes. The sun peeked over the rim of the horizon, its bright, red-gold rays shining in through the passenger side window and forcing Belle to turn her head toward him. Still, she kept her gaze stubbornly lowered. Finally, she spoke, turning the full force of her accusing blue eyes on him.

“That’s it?” she demanded. “Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?”

Gold rubbed a hand tiredly over his mouth, pushing away equal parts weariness and irritation. Between his sleepless night and the exhaustion from not one but two brushes with death, he was far too tired to argue with Belle. The burn on his hand and the throbbing in his ankle didn’t sweeten his disposition, either. He needed to focus on getting to his destination. The sooner he could leave Belle someplace safe, the sooner he could deal with the target painted on his back. For good or ill, he would bring the issue to a close, and Belle would be safe.

He resumed driving, carefully keeping his eyes on the road instead of on the woman who was rapidly growing to loathe him. 

“You have the luxury of thinking in those terms,” he said quietly. “Right and wrong. Bravery and cowardice. Honor and deceit. Under…” He cut himself off with a muffled curse. He couldn’t mention the Table to her; to do so would only invite questions. He needed to phrase this as vaguely as possible. “In my world, those concepts are meaningless. There’s only alive, and dead. Anyone who concerns themselves with  _ doing the right thing _ often finds themselves with a knife in their back.”

“So, what, that justifies it?”

He shrugged with practiced nonchalance. “Doesn’t it? Miss Frost joined my world willingly. She knew the risks before she got involved, which is more than could be said about many.” More than could be said about him. By the time he’d realized that most orphanages didn’t pit their charges against each other in a contest of kill or be killed, he’d been a grown man.

He risked a glance at her then, and promptly wished he hadn’t. The fight had gone out of her: shoulders slumped, eyes dim with what could only be described as pity. The sight sickened him. He’d rather have her rage directed at him than her pity.

“I’m glad I don’t have to live in that world,” she said quietly.

He swallowed against the lump in his throat. “As am I.” And he would tear down the entire infrastructure of the High Table with his bare hands to keep it that way. Once this was over, Belle would be free to return to her life as though none of this had ever happened. She would return to her books and her tea and the tiny studio apartment she’d told him about once, and she would do her best to forget he ever existed. She would find someone to love and grow old with, maybe someone to have children with.

For a moment, he allowed himself to imagine himself as that man. A loving husband who rubbed his wife’s sore feet after a long day working at the library. A family man, working a boring job to provide for his wife and children - one where his contracts were all above-board, legal, and didn’t spell out the end of someone’s life in the fine print. A doting father who saw to it that their children were loved and provided for and never,  _ ever _ experienced the abuse, neglect and ruthless training that had been his own childhood. The sort of man who could be satisfied with average, repetitive suburban life, who wouldn’t lie awake at night longing for the power he’d made for himself, the power to bring men to their knees with the stroke of a pen or the slash of a knife.

It was a pretty dream. Not meant for one such as him. He pushed it away with regret.

They drove in silence for a while longer. Gold struggled to think of something, anything, to say. In short order, he would be leaving Belle behind, never to see her again. His odds of surviving a contract on his head and convincing the man who wanted him dead to spare his life were slim, he knew. Even if he somehow did manage to pull off the near-impossible and survive this ordeal, Belle would never want to see him again. There was nothing to be done about that. As much as it pained him, it would be best for her if their paths never crossed again. But it would be nice if his last memory of her wasn’t of her disgust and pity.

Belle broke the silence first. “Storybrooke, Maine,” she read off of the town’s welcome sign as they passed. She turned curious eyes toward him. “What’s in Storybrooke, Maine?”

“The last man I killed before last night.” He regretted the words even as they left his mouth. What the hell was he  _ doing? _ Was he  _ trying _ to antagonize her in their last minutes together?

Belle didn’t rise to the bait. She turned her face from him, choosing to look out the window rather than at him. That was fine. They were nearly at their destination.

Gold didn’t drive to the town proper. There was no need. Storybrooke was a quiet, dull little hamlet, wholly unremarkable in every way. Isolated, far enough from New York that nobody would ever go there without reason - even to investigate the property on the outskirts of town he’d purchased three years ago. But still close enough for him to drop by when the occasion called for it.

Pulling up to the sprawling brown mansion loosened Belle’s tongue once again. “Whose house is this?” she asked.

“Technically, mine,” he replied. She turned to him, raising an unimpressed eyebrow, prompting him to elaborate. “A property I purchased a few years ago, for a… former associate. Everything is in my name, but he lives here and maintains the property.” 

“And this  _ former associate _ of yours,” she said. “You trust him?”

“As much as I trust anyone,” he said, which wasn’t saying much. He trusted no one. “He owes me a very large favor, and he knows it. He won’t want to help, but he will.” He parked the car and pulled the key from the ignition.

Belle made no move to get out of the car. “You’re going to blackmail someone into helping you?” she asked. “Isn’t this man your friend? I mean, you bought him a  _ mansion. _ He must mean something to you. Couldn’t you just ask for help?”

He shook his head. “That’s not how things work in my circle,” he said. “There are favors given, and debts owed. Friendship means little compared to obligation.”

There it was again: that sad, pitying look in her eyes. He loathed it. It made him feel small, weak. Pathetic. “It sounds very lonely,” she said softly.

He didn’t respond. Anxious to be out of the car, out from under the weight of her eyes, he fumbled for his cane. Belatedly, he remembered something. He reached out a hand to her in warning, letting it hover millimeters away from the soft blue weave of her cardigan. “One last thing: don’t drink anything he gives you,” he cautioned. “Not unless I tell you it’s safe.”

Belle opened her mouth, probably to ask a host of questions. He forestalled her by opening his door and stepping out of the car. His ankle protested as he rested weight on it for the first time in hours. With a pained grimace, he gingerly made his way up the cobbled path to the front door, Belle a few steps behind.

When he was ten feet away, the front door slammed open. Gold’s grip tightened on the handle of his cane, tight enough that the elaborate scrollwork dug into his palm. His heart raced in his chest as a dark blonde blur raced toward him, even as he recognized it. The only threat it imposed to him was the pain to his throbbing ankle as his honorary niece plowed into him with a rib-cracking hug.

“Uncle Rum!” the blonde, brown-eyed girl cried. “You didn’t tell us you were coming!”

Gold wrapped his free arm loosely around her shoulders, his right hand occupied with his cane. “I thought I’d surprise you,” he said. God, when had she gotten so  _ big _ ? The top of her head nearly reached his shoulder.

She pulled back to give him a skeptical look. “You  _ hate _ surprises. You always plan visits weeks ahead of time,” she said in the know-it-all tone only a child could pull off. Her lower lip jutted out in an adorable pout. “You’re here to talk about business with Papa, aren’t you?”

“I suppose I am,” he admitted . At her disappointed frown, he hastened to add, “But I’ve got your birthday present in my trunk. If you can put up with me hogging your papa for an hour or two, I’ll give it to you. Deal?”

His niece rolled her eyes. “My birthday was a  _ month _ ago,” she reminded him. “Papa threw me a tea party. My whole class showed up. There was music and cake and games, and you missed it all.”

As far as Gold was concerned, that wasn’t a bad thing. He enjoyed his niece’s company, but navigating a house full of screaming, frosting-covered children wasn’t his idea of a perfect Sunday. Still, he hated seeing the disappointment on her face. “I’m sorry, Paige,” he said. “Work has been murder lately. I haven’t been able to get away in months.” 

Over his shoulder, Belle snorted. Paige pulled back from him, glancing between him and Belle uncertainly. “Who’s that?” she asked, pointing toward his companion.

“Ah.” Gold stepped out of his niece’s embrace, stepping aside so they could look at each other. “How rude of me. Paige, this is my friend, Miss French. Miss French, my niece, Paige.”

Belle held her hand out in greeting, giving Paige a warm, genuine smile that sent a spark of jealousy through him. It was unworthy and petty of him to envy his niece, he knew, but after enduring a night of Belle’s disgust, it rankled to see her smile so readily for a girl she’d just met. “Nice to meet you, Paige,” she said in a conspiratory tone, giving the girl’s hand a firm shake. “You can call me Belle. I’m not as formal as your Uncle Rum,” she added, giving him a sidelong glance.

“Nice to meet you, Belle!”

From within the house, a familiar male voice floated out. “Let your uncle in and shut the door, Grace. You’re letting all the warm air out.”

Gold suppressed a wince. Perhaps Belle hadn’t noticed Jefferson’s slip.

The three of them stepped inside. Paige closed, locked, and deadbolted the door behind them while Belle looked around the entryway, taking in the well-lit space. The cream-colored walls offset the oak hardwood floors. The area was furnished with matching furniture: a table, a low bench, and a cubby for storing shoes. With an aggrieved sigh, he settled onto the bench to remove his shiny, black leather oxfords, knowing he’d catch hell from Jefferson if he didn’t. After a pause, he removed his ankle brace to give the joint some room to breathe. Once he finished and stood, Belle took his place on the bench to remove her own shoes.

Once Gold was in his stocking feet and Belle was barefoot, Paige held her hands out. “Can I take your jacket, Uncle Rum?” she asked. 

Gold reached for the buttons on his jacket before he caught himself. This was one of the only places, outside of his shop and his apartment, where he felt comfortable shedding his outermost layer. He belatedly remembered that he was wearing his knife harness. It wouldn’t do for his eight -year-old niece to see him so armed. 

“Perhaps in a bit, after I warm up. I still have a chill from outside,” he lied smoothly.

Large brown eyes turned to Belle. “What about you? Can I take your sweater?” Paige asked.

Belle’s hand strayed to the front of her cardigan, pulling it more snugly around her. “No, thank you,” she said quickly.

With a nod, Paige turned around, skipping off down the hallway toward the kitchen. “Papa, guess what?” she called. “Uncle Rum brought a  _ girl _ with him!”

“A  _ girl, _ huh?” her father’s voice replied.

Gold glanced at Belle, his cheeks heating. He opened his mouth to change the subject, a question on his lips, but Belle beat him to it.

“I thought you said her name was Paige,” she whispered. “Why did her father call her Grace?”

Belle, it seemed, never missed a trick. “Grace is her middle name,” he said truthfully. “Everyone else calls her Paige, but Jefferson calls her Grace.” Belle opened her mouth, doubtless to ask something else. He headed her off at the pass, gesturing for her to follow Paige down the hall. He escorted her toward the kitchen, his hand hovering an inch from the small of her back. 

Belle stopped dead in the kitchen doorway until Gold prompted her forward. The sight that greeted him was nothing out of the ordinary for this house, though he could see how Belle might find it unexpected. The kitchen was warm and bright, with sunlight streaming in through the many windows. The smell and sound of sizzling bacon filled the air. Paige was seated at the granite-topped kitchen island, her feet kicking where they dangled off her chair. She was busily picking stems from blueberries while her father cooked on the stove. As always, Jefferson wore a high turtleneck sweater that nearly reached his jaw. On top of that was a frilly white apron.

At their entrance, he glanced over his shoulder. “Good timing,” he called. “I was just making pancakes, and this recipe makes a lot. You can have blueberry, chocolate chip, or plain.” He flipped the pancakes on the skillet, turning toward them and wiping his hands on his apron. His blue eyes darted between Gold and Belle assessingly. “So you must be the  _ girl _ Paige just told me about.” He held out his hand. “I’m Jefferson. And you are…?”

Belle’s eyebrows lowered, her gaze darting between Paige and Jefferson. Of course she noticed that he’d called her Paige. Of all the women out there, why did Gold have to choose one who was so bloody perceptive? With an uncertain smile, she took his proffered hand and shook it. “I’m Belle. Nice to meet you.”

“Pleasure’s mine.” He stepped back toward the stove, gesturing toward the kettle on the back burner. “Can I offer either of you some tea?”

“ _ No.  _ No bloody tea.” Gold growled, his lips pressed in a hard, thin line. 

“Okay, okay.” He stacked finished pancakes on a plate, pouring more batter onto the skillet. “Paige, why don’t you give Belle here a tour of the house?”

The young girl heaved a long-suffering sigh, bringing her finished bowl of berries to her father before taking Belle’s hand. “That means Papa and Uncle Rum want to talk business,” she informed Belle. “Come on. I’ll show you my room.”

Jefferson watched them leave over his shoulder. “I swear she gets more like Prissy every day,” he murmured. “No patience for when you and I talk business. And - ow!” he cried as Gold smacked him upside the head. “Jesus, at least take your ring off before you do that!”

“What the hell do you think you’re playing at?” Gold hissed. “Do you have any idea what I had to go through to get you out of the Table’s influence?”

“Not nearly as much as I did,” the taller man retorted, rubbing at his throat significantly. “One might say it was a real pain in the neck.”

Gold ignored the quip. It wasn’t the first time Jefferson had made the joke, and it wouldn’t be the last. “I didn’t do what I did so you could blow your fucking cover by calling your daughter her old name!” he snarled, careful to keep quiet lest either Belle or Paige should overhear.

Jefferson set his jaw stubbornly, adding a handful of blueberries to the pancakes. “Priscilla named her,” he said quietly. “She always wanted a daughter named Grace. Out there,” he gestured out the window with his spatula, “she can be Paige. But in here, she will always be my Grace.”

“And if the Table finds out? What then?” Gold demanded. “If they find out what I did to get you out--”

“Then all three of us are fucked. I know.” Keeping his attention focused on the stove, he wiped absently at one eye. “Grace…  _ Paige… _ knows that we’re hiding. She’s careful, and so am I. You know that.” Composure regained, he shot Gold a sidelong glance. “And on the note of _ being careful… _ take the damn harness off. You know Prissy’s old rule: no weapons at the table.”

With a grumble, Gold shucked his jacket, draping it carefully over a kitchen chair, transferring the contents of the inner pocket to his trousers. He carefully removed his knife harness, placing it and his ankle brace in Jefferson’s waiting hand. The taller man walked over to the refrigerator, opening the wooden cabinet over it and tucking his knife harness inside, where Gold couldn’t reach it.

“You can have your toys back  _ after _ you finish eating,” he said with a mock-chiding tone and a shit-eating grin.

Gold glowered at him. “Jefferson…” he said warningly.

“Relax. It’ll just be for a few minutes.” Jefferson eyed him thoughtfully. “So who’s the girl? She’s cute.”

Gold fought down the second flare of jealousy in under ten minutes, this time for his disgustingly handsome former colleague. It didn’t matter that Jefferson was still mourning the death of his wife; Gold suddenly questioned the wisdom of leaving Belle here with him.

“I need a favor,” he began. “Two, actually.”

“Ohhh, no. No, no, no,” Jefferson protested. “I’m  _ out _ , remember? The whole reason we went through all that trouble was to get me out. So Grace still has her papa.”

“I’m not asking you to come back,” Gold quickly assured him. “But… I need help.” Getting those words out left a bad taste in his mouth.

Jefferson, for his part, didn’t so much as glance at him, focusing on plating the pancakes and bacon. “We’ll talk about it after breakfast. I’m not agreeing to anything,” he quickly added. “But we’ll talk. Paige!” he yelled suddenly, making Gold wince. “Breakfast is ready!”

“Coming!”

The sound of thumping footsteps running down the stairs heralded Paige’s arrival, followed shortly by Belle. Belle paused in the doorway, looking him up and down with an odd look on her face. 

Before he could question her, Jefferson spoke. “Belle, Gold, sit down. Paige, could you grab an ice pack from the freezer? Your Uncle Rum’s ankle is bothering him.”

Gold’s cheeks heated. “I’m fine.”

“What you  _ are _ is a stubborn mule. Your limping is worse than usual. Now sit your butt down and prop that foot up.”

Gold opened his mouth to argue. But before he could say anything, Paige approached with one of the ice packs they kept on hand specifically for him, her brown eyes wide with guilt and worry. “Did I hurt your leg when I hugged you?” she asked. “Papa always tells me to go easy, but I just got so excited to see you.”

Gold softened in the face of his niece’s concern. “No, pet,” he assured her. “I hurt it last night. I just haven’t had a chance to rest it, is all.” Taking his customary seat - the one where he’d draped his jacket - he carefully peeled his sock off and rested his injured foot on the next seat over. Belle’s harsh intake of breath surprised him into looking up at her. Her eyes were riveted on the mass of scars, the joint red and swollen. Her eyebrows lowered in a worried frown as her lower lip was pinched between her teeth.

Without taking his eyes off her, he fumbled blindly for the ice pack and dish towel in Paige’s hands. Covering the old injury provided instant relief - from the insistent throbbing pain as well as the weight of Belle’s stare. 

Breakfast passed in relative silence, apart from Paige’s chatter. Gold poured himself and Belle a glass of orange juice only after watching Paige pour herself a glass from the same pitcher. She nodded her thanks to him, but didn’t say a word. It seemed that she still wasn’t speaking to him, which was probably for the best. He wondered if she’d let him say goodbye before he returned to the danger he’d left behind in New York.

The first bite of chocolate chip pancakes made him realize just how hungry he was; apart from a single glass of scotch, he hadn’t put anything in his stomach since lunch yesterday. Belle attacked her blueberry pancakes with similar gusto. Gold watched her eat from the corner of his eye. When he’d allowed himself to picture having breakfast with Belle, it sure as hell hadn’t been at Jefferson’s breakfast table, with Paige hiding a giggle between her hand every time she caught him glancing at Belle. But this was all he could expect to get.

Soon everyone’s plates were cleaned. Paige rose to clear the table, but Jefferson forestalled her. “I’ll take care of the dishes later, Paige,” he said. “Why don’t you spend some more time with Belle?”

“But Papa, you said we’d have a tea party after breakfast!” she protested.

“I know, crumpet, but your uncle and I have things to discuss.”

Belle picked up on the hint quickly. “I might not be as good company as your papa, but I  _ love _ tea,” she said. “I haven’t been to a fancy tea party in years. Think you could indulge me?”

“Well.. okay…”

Belle and Paige left the kitchen hand-in-hand. Without a word, Jefferson retrieved Gold’s knife harness, waiting until he’d shrugged back into it and his jacket before he gestured for Gold to follow him toward a locked door, unlocking it with a key in his pocket. The two men descended into the mansion’s basement, passing through a sewing studio with various half-finished items: shirts, vests, trousers, hats, even a hand-sewn stuffed rabbit for Paige. They stepped to the far wall, where a lone bookshelf was packed to bursting with instructional books of various descriptions. Jefferson reached behind the bookcase and flipped a switch, which caused the entire thing to swing outward to reveal a hidden room.

“Come on in,” he said. This room was more dimly-lit than the sewing workshop, packed to bursting with remnants from his old life. Weaponry was displayed on pegs from every wall. Unlike Gold, Jefferson had preferred to keep as much distance between himself and his targets as possible. He had a gun for every occasion: sniper rifles, assault rifles, pistols, shotguns, a hand crossbow, and the throwing knives that Gold had spent years teaching him to use effectively. Even the antique blunderbuss Gold had gifted him one year on his birthday was clean and kept in working condition.

Tucked in the far corner of the cramped room was one of the reasons Gold had come: Jefferson’s computer. There were very few people who could get past the various firewalls and encryptions that safeguarded the Continental’s electronic records. His old friend was one of them.

Jefferson plopped down in the computer chair, gesturing for Gold to take the one other chair in the room. Gold sank into it with a relieved sigh. Icing his ankle had helped with the pain, but the muscle was still strained.

“So,” Jefferson said, “spill. I know you didn’t drive all night just to introduce me to your new girlfriend.”

Gold didn’t prevaricate. Gold’s presence here put Paige’s new identity in peril, and Jefferson would stand for no less than the blunt, unembellished truth when it came to his daughter’s safety. If Gold had any chance of convincing his old friend to help, he needed to stay on his good side.

“There’s a contract,” he began without preamble.

“What, on that sweet girl upstairs? Who’d she manage to piss off?”

Gold rolled his eyes impatiently. “No, not  _ her _ , you idiot, on me!” he snarled.

“Oh. Well,  _ that _ I can see. You’ve got a way with people.” Jefferson swiveled his chair slowly back and forth. “So who’d  _ you _ piss off, then?”

“Probably more people than I care to recount,” he admitted. “But as for who took out a contract on me, I can only guess. I need you to see what you can find if I’m to have any hope of surviving this thing.”

“And there it is,” the younger man sighed. “You know, when most people ask a friend for a favor, they ask for, like, help moving furniture. They don’t ask you to hack into the records of a global criminal underworld and risk coming back under their radar.”

Gold knew he was asking a lot. But he had no other recourse. He rummaged through his trouser pocket, pushing the Marker and fountain pen aside to wrap his fingers around his coin wallet. “There’s a gold coin in it for you,” he offered, knowing it was weak compensation.

Jefferson snorted. “Oh, sure, fat lot of good that’ll do me in Bumfuck, Nowhere,” he muttered. His blue eyes met and held Gold’s brown, and he subsided with another sigh. “Fine, fine, you win. Give me the damn coin.”

Gold slid out a single gold coin with his thumb, flipping it through the air. Jefferson caught it effortlessly. Gold eyed the remaining two coins, his brow furrowing. Wasn’t he only supposed to have one left? He went through the events of the previous night. He’d had three, before paying a bribe to the bartender at the continental. He’d gotten four more from the library, bringing his count up to six, and spent three of them disposing of the bodies he’d left behind. Then there was the one he’d spent disposing of Miss Frost…

No, he realized. He hadn’t. He’d been in such a rush to get away from his attackers in the red sports car that he’d left the city without taking care of his assistant’s body. 

He cursed softly. If the store had gone unmolested, he could take care of the body tomorrow with nobody being any the wiser. But with the shop set ablaze, no doubt the fire department had been called and discovered the body. He wouldn’t be in legal trouble - he’d paid enough handsome bribes to be nigh untouchable in the entire state of New York. Even on the slim chance he were arrested, he had the District Attorney, George Spencer, in his pocket.

No, his concern was far more pressing. Miss Frost’s family was powerful. If it was discovered that she’d died in his shop, with a knife wound in her back…

“So,” Jefferson said, pulling Gold from his thoughts, “how’d the lovely Belle get roped into this mess? She doesn’t seem like the ‘murder and corruption’ type.” His eyes were focused on the screen while he did something Gold couldn’t even begin to understand. 

One of the things Gold most liked about life under the Table was that modern technology was entirely optional. He didn’t need a smartphone or a computer to get information, when the Table’s records were all kept in hard copy. Typewriters and telegraphs were slower than emails, true, but they couldn’t be hacked remotely.

Of course, his aversion to technology was what had brought him to Jefferson’s door. Ever cautious, the Table and the Continental kept electronic records of everything: personnel, contracts, deals, alliances, everything. If they caught wind that someone had the ability to access their data, they would have stopped at nothing to ensure that Jefferson was dead. Fortunately for them both, the Table was under the impression that he already was.

“She’s not,” Gold replied. “Miss French is a simple librarian who helped me to find a few books. Whoever has been gathering intel on me must have noticed that we’ve had a conversation or two.” 

Jefferson nodded, scrolling through a page and typing something. “Right, right, that makes sense. Last time I got targeted, the hunter assigned to my contract wound up kidnapping the kid working the McDonald’s drive through to get to me.”

Gold blinked. “Really?”

That earned him a derisive snort. “No, doofus, not really. Come on, Gold. You and I both know that nobody under the Table is that sloppy. So either your Miss French is being targeted, or you two are a hell of a lot closer than you’re letting on. And judging by the fact that you brought her here, I’m willing to bet it’s the latter.” Fingering the collar of his high-necked sweater, he added in a mutter, “Not to mention the puppy-dog eyes you kept giving her at breakfast.”

Gold didn’t even want to dignify that with a response. The idea of someone as sweet and innocent as Belle running afoul of a mob family or some other higher-up of the underworld was patently ridiculous. Even more ridiculous than the notion of him making  _ puppy-dog eyes _ over the breakfast table. He wasn’t about to elaborate on his relationship - or lack thereof - with Belle. Certainly not to Jefferson. He’d rather gouge his own eyes out than open himself up to that level of ridicule.

Hastily, he changed the subject. “Just how bloody long is this going to take?” he snapped. 

When Jefferson responded, it was with a very patient tone, as though he were talking to a misbehaving child. “Look, Gold, this stuff takes time. It’s a closed contract, okay? That means details aren’t made readily available to just anybody.”

“I know what a closed contract is, thank you.”

“Point being, you’re asking me to get info that’s only given to hired contractors. It’s not like I can just Google ‘who wants Gold dead.’” He snickered. “Even if I could, that’d be a long list. It’d take me a week just to comb through all the results.”

Lips pressed in an impatient line, Gold spun the handle of his cane slowly in one hand. Occasionally, Jefferson typed something, or made a frustrated noise, but apart from that, the pair of them sat in silence. 

Eventually, the man at the computer broke it. “Seriously, though, why bring her here? You haven’t even told anyone in the old band that I’m alive. Why her?”

There was no way to answer that without revealing, to some extent, the depth of his regard for Belle. But he didn’t have to give Jefferson fodder for jokes. “Last night, at the library, three men attacked Belle, in order to lay a trap for me. Somehow, they knew I’d be there. That I’d come for her the moment I sensed a trap. They knew…” 

He trailed off with a frown. How  _ had _ they known he’d be there? In the few months of their acquaintance, Gold had always visited Belle on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays. Not once had he come on a Thursday. And yet the trap had been set and baited. The library had been completely cleared of patrons and fellow workers, leaving only him and Belle. A mess had been left in the reading room, including a cart full of books that needed to be brought down to the stacks. That had all been deliberate. And Keith had spoken of him - called him possessive. But how the hell had they known he was coming?

He was missing some key bit of information, he knew. If he could just figure out who was after him, he could begin to piece together the puzzle.

He cleared his throat “I don’t know how they found out,” he continued, “but they did. I can’t protect her from hunters  _ and _ find the man who’s trying to kill me. I need you to keep her safe.”

Jefferson pushed himself back from his computer, turning to face Gold. All traces of humor were gone from his face. “So why not just let them kill her? Be one less thing to worry about.” Gold shifted in his seat, both hands gripping the head of his cane in a white-knuckled grip. He lowered his head to stare at his feet. “Hell, why didn’t you kill her yourself? Wouldn’t be the first time one of us had to get rid of dead weight to save our necks.”

Unbidden, the image of his assistant formed behind his eyes, sprawled facedown across the floor of his shop with one of his knives sticking out of her back. Only where Miss Frost wore her red hair in twin braids and preferred long skirts, this figure’s face was obscured by chestnut curls, her short skirt ending above her knees. His heart pounded in his overtight chest, his breath ragged and labored.

“Why not, Gold?” Jefferson pressed.

His head snapped up. “Because she’s  _ mine,” _ he snarled, his teeth bared in a fierce rictus. His voice came out in a guttural growl. “Mine to protect. Anyone who harms so much as one fucking hair on her head will learn the true meaning of pain. They’ll learn just how far I can bend a man before he breaks - body, mind, and soul.”

Jefferson raised his hands - slowly, slowly - in a pacifying gesture. “Alright Rum,” he murmured soothingly. “Nobody’s gonna hurt Belle. We’ll keep her safe, you and me. Okay?” Gold said nothing, teeth clenched so tightly they practically creaked in his head. “Time to come back, Rum,” he continued. “Come on. Breathe with me.”

Reluctantly, Gold matched his breathing to his friend’s - inhaling slowly, holding, and exhaling. Gradually his muscles relaxed, his jaw unclenching and his heart rate slowing.

“Good?” Jefferson asked. Gold nodded. With a relieved sigh, the taller man leaned back in his seat. “Jesus, Gold, I haven’t seen you go all Dark One on me in years. Not since--”

“ _ Don’t say her name.” _

“Wasn’t going to,” he said placatingly. “But… Jesus, I’ve never seen you like this over a woman. Not once. Weren’t you the one who always said only an idiot gets involved with someone outside the Table’s influence?”

“Miss French and I aren’t involved,” he said stiffly, scrambling to pick up the shattered fragments of his composure and piece them into something resembling dignity.

“No, but you’d like to be,” Jefferson persisted.

Normally, Jefferson was the only person in the world from whom Gold would tolerate such harassment. But he was still feeling raw and exposed from his earlier outburst. “Change the subject,” he advised.

“Fair enough.” He turned back toward the computer screen. “Okay, looks like my search through the Continental’s database wrapped up. And the grand total of contracts on your life is… zero.”

Gold shook his head. “That can’t be right. Someone put a price on my head. One of Belle’s attackers said so.”

Jefferson pushed away from the computer with a shrug. “Look, I’m just telling you what I see. There are no contracts out for you. None. So I’m gonna ask you one more time, because you’re asking me to take her into my home: are you  _ sure _ the contract isn’t for Belle?”

He waved the idea away. “Impossible,” he scoffed. “She’d never even held a gun before last night. And her reaction when I killed a woman in front of her… She was furious. That wasn’t the reaction of a cold-blooded killer.”

“Well, then the only other possibility is that somebody wants you dead badly enough to circumvent the usual channels,” Jefferson hypothesized.

Gold nodded. The entire criminal underworld - the Continental, the High Table, and everyone under their purview - thrived on an exhaustive set of rules of varying import. Some were made to be bent or skirted around. Others were to be followed in both letter and spirit, under pain of death. One such rule was the well-known primary rule: no blood could be shed on the grounds of any branch of the Continental Hotel. Another was that a price could only be leveled on someone’s life by taking out a contract through the Continental’s administrators. If someone was willing to risk death by flouting that rule, they must be very desperate indeed to have him silenced. “Someone must have known I’d have a way of ascertaining who would put out a contract,” he hazarded. “They must not want my death traced back to them.”

“You’d better be right,” Jefferson cautioned. “If I find out you’re having me put Grace in danger because you’re thinking with your other head, you and I are gonna have more than words.” He glanced significantly at the mini arsenal on his wall.

“Likewise, if I find out that you don’t protect Belle with your life.” Gold stood, flexing his ankle experimentally while he dusted a bit of imaginary lint from his sleeve. The joint was still sore, but icing it and taking weight off of it had done it some good. “I should be going. Every minute I linger, I’m putting all three of you in danger.”

“Say goodbye to the girls on your way out.” Jefferson stood, leveling Gold with a serious stare. “And… listen. Be safe, yeah? Don’t do anything stupid or heroic.”

Gold scoffed. “Consider who you’re talking to.” He quickly abandoned his half-hearted attempt at levity. “Be seeing you,” he said gravely.

For a split second, Jefferson looked like he was going to argue: brow furrowed, mouth open to take a breath. Then he subsided. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “Be seeing you.”

Gold took the steps slowly, as though he were waist-deep in molasses. He made his way slowly up to the second floor, toward Paige’s bedroom, pausing when he heard his name.

“So are you Uncle Rum’s girlfriend?” the young girl asked. “I’ve never seen him with a girl before.”

Gold winced. Asking embarrassing questions about his love life was, apparently, a family trait.

“No, I’m not,” Belle replied. “Your uncle is just helping me with something.”

“Oh,” Paige said, the disappointment in her voice only a fraction of what Gold was feeling in that moment. “So how do you know each other, then?”

For several long moments, Belle was quiet, and Gold wondered what she would say. Not that he was worried about her telling Paige about what had transpired last night. Belle was smarter than that. But would she talk about the tentative friendship they’d struck up? Would she bring up the pathetic torch he carried for her? Or, a perverse, masochistic part of him wondered, would she confide in the girl, admit to the same quiet yearning that haunted his every waking moment?

It seemed that she would do none of those things. “I don’t think we know each other at all,” she said softly, her voice tinged with… regret?

“Well, I think Uncle Rum likes you,” Paige insisted with the self-assurance only a match-making child could possess. “I mean, he  _ like likes  _ you. Do you  _ like like _ him?”

Alright, that was quite enough of that. Gold let the tip of his cane fall to the hallway runner with a loud  _ thump _ to alert them to his presence. Limping to the doorway of Paige’s bedroom, he peeked inside and smothered a chuckle at the sight that greeted him.

Paige, as always, demanded fancy dress for her tea parties, and this was no exception. Anyone who attended was required to arrive in costume. Even Gold was no exception to the rule, much to his chagrin (though he drew the line at the powder-blue fairy wings Paige had once tried to cajole him into wearing). Since Belle lacked a costume of her own, she was forced to wear the outfit that Paige usually reserved for Gold: an oversized pink apron with a heart emblazoned on the chest, and a floppy, wide-brimmed sky-blue hat with an enormous daisy on the brim. Paige, for her part, wore her Alice in Wonderland dress from last Halloween. The two were perched on the two tiny antique wooden chairs, sipping imaginary drinks from an antique silver tea service.

Gold raised a hand to his mouth to scrub away his smirk. “I see I’ve been usurped in my role as Mrs. Nesbitt,” he remarked, stepping into the room.

Belle lifted her nose high in the air with a haughty look. “That’s  _ Lady _ Nesbitt of Derbyshire,” she said in her best approximation of a posh British accent. She held her hand out, palm down, like a refined lady offering the back of her hand for a gentleman to kiss.

Before he realized what he was doing, he’d caught her hand up in his, bending low at the waist in a formal bow. He froze, his lips hovering mere millimeters from her skin. He could feel the warmth of her thrumming in the air between them, and suddenly he wanted with all his being to press his lips to her skin, to burn her taste so deeply into his psyche that he would never fade from his memory. His breath ghosted from him in a sigh. Distantly, he heard Belle’s breathing hitch, and watched avidly as the fine hairs on her hand stood on end. Slowly, he raised his eyes to meet hers. Cheeks flushed, lips parted slightly, she was the most beautiful sight he’d ever seen - even in the ridiculous costume Paige had given her. 

After a long moment that stretched on for eternity and ended all too soon, her eyes lowered and she pulled her hand from his, reminding him that  _ she wasn’t for him. _ Of course. How presumptuous of him. He raised himself to his full, inconsiderable height and stepped back, holding his cane in both hands to put some distance between them.

“I hate to interrupt this lovely soiree, Paige, but might I borrow Miss French for a few minutes?”

Paige agreed readily, glancing between him and Belle with a smug grin. Belle looked at him for a long moment with a frown. This wasn’t the furious glare she’d given him when she’d demanded answers about Miss Frost. Now she looked… puzzled, as though she was trying to figure something out. For the life of him, he had no idea what it could be. She seemed to come to some sort of conclusion, because she nodded jerkily and pulled off her costume, following him down the stairs and out the front door. 

The sun had risen properly since their arrival a few hours ago, shining brightly over the well-manicured lawn. A chill autumn breeze rustled the wall of trees surrounding the property. Once they reached the grass, Belle took the lead, bringing them to a wooden lawn swing near the front edge of the property. She sat down with a contented sigh, tilting her head back to better enjoy the sun’s warming rays. Gold stood sentry by her side. His ears strained for the sound of any approaching vehicles. He couldn’t let his guard down for a moment, not even here.

“You can sit down, you know,” she said after a while without opening her eyes.

He looked down at her with a frown. Her lustrous chestnut curls shone with auburn highlights in the sun, her porcelain skin taking on a luminosity he’d never seen in the dimmer lights of the library. She seemed to reflect any light the world gave her, gifting it back to an undeserving world. The sunshine glinted off the golden head of his cane in a pale imitation of her own inner light, the black wool of his suit absorbing any light that touched it. How fitting. She was a being of pure light - innocence and goodness personified - while he was a creature of darkness.

“I’m fine,” he said.

She somehow managed the tricky feat of rolling her eyes without even opening them. “Knock it off,” she said impatiently. “You said yourself that you hurt your leg saving me. The least I can do is let you share a seat with me.” When he didn’t make a move, her eyes, even more impossibly blue in the light of day, opened and pinned him under their unrelenting stare. “Sit. Please.”

He could deny her nothing, of course. Limping to the far side of the swing, he carefully lowered himself into it, careful to keep as much space between them as he could. He spun his cane slowly in his hands, vaguely admiring the sheen of the buttery yellow metal in the sunlight.

“I spoke to Jefferson,” he said. “He’s agreed to let you stay.”

She frowned at that. “If… if people are trying to get to me, what’s stopping them from finding me here? I can’t stay here if it’ll put a child in danger. I won’t.”

“Those men were only after you to get to me,” he explained, glancing over at her. Her eyes were glued to her hands, which clasped each other tightly on her knees. She worried her lower lip with her teeth. Clearly more reassurance was needed. “Jefferson will be able to protect you. He’s… like me.”

“A killer.”

“Yes.” The accusation hurt no less for the truth of it. “Jefferson grew up in… similar circumstances as I did. Killing was a matter of survival. When he expressed a desire to leave this life behind to raise his daughter, his employer put a price on his head. I was selected to carry out his execution.” A car approached on the road. Gold’s eyes flickered toward the far end of the driveway. The car drove by without slowing, and Gold released a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “I cut his throat myself.”

“You helped him fake his death,” she realized. “You bought him a house so he could be with his daughter.” He didn’t confirm or deny it. What was the point? “Why?” she asked.

He waved a hand dismissively. “I knew he’d owe me a favor,” he muttered. “I ensured his daughter’s safety. Now he’ll ensure yours.”

“And what will you do?”

“Jefferson searched my employers’ database for information on the contract.” Beside him, Belle stiffened. “He didn’t find anything,” he was quick to assure her. “But the price on my head remains. I need to go back to New York.”

“By yourself?” she demanded. “I can’t let you do that.”

“You’ll be safer here,” he insisted, “and I’ll have better odds if I don’t have to protect you.” Belle opened her mouth to argue, but he cut her off. “Belle, please. I don’t want to…” He trailed off, deciding against what he’d been about to say. He didn’t have her; he had no right to protest losing her. “I’ll feel better knowing you’re safe.”

She glared at him for a full minute, concern shining through the anger in her eyes. “Fine,” she conceded. “But promise me one thing.”

“Anything,” he swore, a quiver of apprehension in his belly. He never agreed to a deal without knowing the terms.

“Promise me, Rumford Gold. Promise you’ll come back.” Her lips quirked in a wry smirk that didn’t meet her eyes. “I haven’t finished yelling at you yet.”

He nodded his head jerkily. “I promise.” He feared that this might be the first outright lie he’d told her.

They sat in a silence that walked the razor’s edge between companionable and awkward. Eventually, Gold rose with some regret.

“I should be going,” he said. “The sooner I get going…” He didn’t finish the sentence. Most likely, the sooner he got going, the sooner he would meet his death. But Belle didn’t need to know that. His ears perked up as another car approached. Was it his imagination, or was it slowing down?

“Rumford, wait!” Belle’s hand reached out and snagged the edge of his sleeve.

He turned toward her, but before he could say anything, a movement at the end of the driveway caught his eye. A familiar scarlet sports car turned onto the driveway, braking suddenly with a spray of gravel.

The blood froze in Gold’s veins. They’d found him. Somehow, impossibly, his attackers had found him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ooooh cliffhanger! This chapter was already getting pretty long, and I'm not 100% sure how the actiony bits are going to play out, so I'm ending things here for now.


	5. Dulce Bellum Inexpertis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This late-night chapter brought to you by the letter I, for insomnia.

“Belle,” Gold said tersely, eyes glued to the bright red sports car in the driveway, “get in the house. Find Jefferson and tell him I was followed.”

“What? No!” Belle rose to her feet, wrapping her hand around his upper arm. At any time that touch, even through the layers of clothing, would have burned. But just now, his blood was ice in his veins. “Rum, I can  _ help.” _

Fear gripped his heart as he imagined the fate that lay in store for Belle if she were to fall into the hands of their attackers. He needed to convince her to get herself to safety. With his ankle, he couldn’t hope to keep up with her, but he could try to fend them off. “And just how exactly do you propose you’ll do that?” he snapped. “You have nothing but a gun you don’t even know how to use. All you can do is get in my way. Now  _ get in the fucking house!” _

The look Belle leveled at him could only be described as enraged. Before she could argue, the car doors opened and three people climbed out. The driver was a woman of East Asian descent, her sleek black hair falling in a waterfall down her back. She wore a black leather jacket, jeans, and a wide belt around her hips lined with handheld incendiary devices. The front passenger was a pale-skinned woman with auburn curls, arrayed in jeans, a lilac sweater, and a white tactical vest. In her hands was an olive green rifle with a familiar long, narrow barrel. A tranquilizer gun - the one that had shot at Belle last night. From the back seat climbed a man clad neck to toe in black, his wavy brown hair and scruffy beard trimmed short. A round polycarbonate shield was strapped to his left arm, a steel collapsible baton in his right. None of them could have been older than their mid-twenties.

“Belle. Get in the house,” Gold repeated. “Jefferson needs to know we’re being attacked. And Paige… someone needs to protect Paige.”

Belle gave him a long, searching look, and nodded. She darted for the house, Gold following at a more sedate pace. The fingers of his left hand slowly plucked at the buttons of his jacket, opening the garment to grant him better access to his knives. The trio watched her every move motionlessly. Gold came to stand between them and the house, cane planted between his two feet, hands resting on the handle as though he hadn’t a care in the world. The three hunters eyed him warily, and he observed them with equal speculation.

The odds weren’t in his favor. His preferred weapons weren’t made for prolonged combat. As an assassin, he preferred altercations that were over nearly as soon as they’d begun, choosing to strike from the shadows and catch his victim unaware. A confrontation like this - outnumbered, outgunned, forced to fight face to face - went against his every instinct. He might be able to take down the woman with the incendiary devices, assuming she wasn’t otherwise armed. The man, however, would be a problem. His baton had further reach than Gold’s knives, and could be wielded with bone-shattering results. Combined with the lightweight shield on his arm, Gold would have little chance of getting a blade past the younger man’s defenses. His only hope was to somehow slip behind the man and attack him from behind. With his injured ankle, he likely lacked the agility to pull off such a move.

And all of this was a moot point in the face of the red-haired woman’s tranquilizer gun. One shot would be enough to put him out of commission for hours. One dart, and it was game over.

He hoped Belle was able to get to Jefferson. Without backup, this altercation would be painfully brief. Without help, he was a dead man. But he’d be damned if he didn’t take at least one of them down with him.

The tension stretched between the four of them, so tight it threatened to snap. Nobody moved a muscle, knowing that the slightest move would push this past the point of no return.

The dark-haired woman in the middle broke the silence. “Dark One,” she said with a respectful nod.

Were he less on his guard, he might have rolled his eyes at the moniker. As it was, he could ill afford to take his eyes off of his opponents for a second. “I haven’t gone by that name in some time,” he told her.

“It’s how we know you.” She gestured to her companions. “Phillip, Aurora and I all heard stories about you. The things you’ve done. People you’ve killed. You’re practically a legend.”

Of course he was. After all, no legend was complete without a monster lurking in the shadows. If these newcomers thought they were the heroes of the story, the courageous warriors sent to slay the beast, they were deeply mistaken. They were villains, no different from him. No different than anyone else lurking under the long shadow of the High Table.

His mouth twisted into a grin that didn’t meet his eyes. “My reputation precedes me, then. Wonderful.” He let his suit jacket fall open, revealing just how well-armed he was. Both Phillip and the unnamed black-haired woman tensed, but didn’t strike. They were afraid of him, then. Good. Fear, he could work with. “Well if you know who I am… then  _ you know who I am _ . The chances of all three of you surviving this encounter are pretty slim. So why don’t you be good boys and girls, get back in your car, and tell your employer that I won’t be taken down so easily.”

“You know just as well as we do that we can’t do that,” the redhead, Aurora, spoke up. 

“Pity.”

“Is this really worth it, Dark One?” the black-haired woman asked. “You know there’s no going against a contract unless the client rescinds it”

"Mulan’s right. This will go so much smoother for everyone if you stand down,” Phillip added.

He scoffed. Smoother for everyone, yes. Everyone except him. Why on earth would he want to make things easier for the ones who wanted him dead? If they were trying to appeal to his better nature, they were in for severe disappointment. If he had a good side, only a select few were allowed so much as a glimpse of it.

For a moment, his resolve wavered. Turning himself in would ensure the safety of Belle, Jefferson, and Paige. Fighting back endangered them all. Belle’s earlier words came back to him, unbidden.  _ You could have done the brave, honorable thing, but you took the coward’s way out. _ Her earnest blue eyes beseeched him to do the right thing. The  _ good _ thing.

All too easily, the cerulean of Belle’s eyes changed, morphing into the icy, arctic blue eyes of the old man who had raised Gold into the man he was today. In an instant he was transported back to the miserable orphanage of his youth, to countless nights of dragging himself, bruised and battered and broken, to his cold bed. Years of sleeping with one eye open, in terror of being attacked by his peers in his most vulnerable state. Nearly two decades of pushing away any hint of friendship or affection for fear of it being used against him. A lifetime of putting his survival before all else.

The decision was easier than he would have liked.

“Sorry to disappoint you, dear,” he said, “but I have no intention of making things easy for anyone.”

Several things happened at once. With a snap of his wrist, Phillip’s steel baton extended to its full length. Gold’s hand slipped into his jacket, his fingers easily finding and slipping into the individual holes on the handguard of his trench knife. And Mulan, the black-haired woman, snatched a cylindrical device from her belt, yanking out the pin and lobbing it underhand at Gold.

He had just enough time to identify the object -  _ stun grenade _ \- and get an arm up in front of his eyes before it went off with a blinding flash of light and a percussive  _ bang. _ Blinking away the small explosion’s afterimage, he managed to get his cane up just in time to block a blow from Phillip’s baton. A slash of his knife was blocked by the younger man’s shield. Before he could double back for another swipe, the air was knocked from his lungs as Mulan’s instep took him in the stomach. 

Staggering back, keeping as much weight as he could off of his right ankle, he was given a split second to catch his breath before the steel baton swung low, aiming for the injured joint. Gold was able to bring his cane down just in time, stopping the baton before it could shatter his already ruined ankle. The downward swing left Phillip wide open, and Gold took merciless advantage. The angle was all wrong for him to bring the blade of his knife to bear, but the trench knife was a versatile weapon. The pointed metal knuckles of the knife’s handguard collided with Phillip’s cheek, drawing points of blood at the site of impact. The younger man stumbled back a step. Pressing his advantage, Gold gripped his cane round the middle and swung it, the golden head taking Phillip in the shoulder.

A searing pain in his left side made him cry out in agony. His grip loosened on his cane, and it was batted easily from his fingers. Behind him, Mulan pressed a handheld flare viciously to his side, the low flame burning him through the layers of his clothing. By instinct, the hand with the knife lashed behind him, bringing the pointed nut at the end of the pommel in contact with Mulan’s head. The blow lacked enough force to do any real damage, but it stunned his attacker long enough to get the blasted flame off of his skin. It was enough. As he turned to finish her, eager to feel his blade sinking into her flesh, Phillip’s baton caught him in the ribs. Gold’s knees buckled as pain exploded through his senses.

“Enough!” Mulan yelled. She and Phillip both backed away a few steps, panting for breath. Gold bent awkwardly to pick up his cane. With his left side burned and his right ribs hopefully only bruised, it was a painful affair. Neither of his attackers moved to stop him. “It doesn’t have to be like this. Step aside, Dark One. Give us the girl.”

_ The girl. _ Gold’s mind raced as a piece of the puzzle fell into place. This wasn’t about him. It had  _ never _ been about him. The trap set at the library had been for Belle, not him. The tranquilizer dart Aurora had shot last night had been aimed at Belle, not him. It was all so obvious, and  _ he’d missed it. _ Careless. He was getting so careless.

He shook his head to clear his self-recriminations. There would be time for that after Belle was safe.

With a start, he realized that there was no sign of the auburn-haired woman. He’d been so preoccupied with fending off two dangerous foes that she’d been able to slip away unnoticed. Which could mean only one thing: she was in the house. She was in the house, ready to take Jefferson, Paige and Belle unawares. One shot would be all it took. One dart piercing anywhere on Belle’s delicate skin, and she would be utterly at their mercy. At the mercy of a man who wanted her dead.

Gold’s vision went dark around the edges. With a roar of rage, he threw himself at Phillip, raining a barrage of blows which the taller man blocked with some effort. A particularly hard blow with his cane knocked the hand holding the baton to the side, leaving an opening. Before he could dart in with the knife, Mulan’s fist thudded into the burn on his side. The pain flashed behind his eyes, nearly bringing him to his knees. Phillip raised the baton over his head, preparing to bring it down on Gold’s head in a lethal blow.

A shot rang out through the air, piercing the younger man through the chest. He fell to the ground without a sound, a dull look of shock on his face.

“Phillip!” Mulan screamed, rushing to her companion’s side.

Panting, grimacing in pain, Gold glanced over his shoulder toward the house while his opponent was distracted. He immediately spotted the black muzzle of a rifle poking out from one of the upstairs bedroom windows. Good - Belle had alerted Jefferson to the danger outside. But neither of them knew of the threat that lurked in the house. 

Using hand signals that only he and a select few others knew, he sent a message to Jefferson.  _ Three attackers. One dead. One inside. I’ll handle this one. _ The rifle jerked up and down in acknowledgement before being pulled back inside.

Turning his attention back to his attackers, he stood over them, looking down on them with hard, flinty eyes. Jefferson’s shot had been a good one, unsurprisingly. Phillip was likely dead before he hit the ground. Mulan wept bitterly over her… comrade? Friend? Lover? In the end, the distinction meant nothing. Dead was dead.

With an agility that belied the depth of her grief, Mulan was on her feet, a neon orange flare gun in her hand. An unusual choice of weapon, not made for accuracy of any sort, but at this range it could do very real damage. Gold batted at her wrist just as she pulled the trigger. The flare sailed harmlessly over his head. He didn’t spare it another glance as he lunged forward, pinning the woman against the side of the house, the blade of his knife pressed roughly to her throat. The gold edge glinted red as a thin rivulet of blood glided along it.

“Here’s what’s going to happen, dear,” he said, his mouth twisting in a malicious grin. “My associate is going to take care of your little friend in the house. While that happens, we’re going to have a little chat, and you’re going to tell me everything I want to know.” He felt one of her hands moving, ever so slowly, toward her belt. He jerked the knife harder against her throat. “Hands behind your back, or I’ll cut your throat right now.”

With a wary look, Mulan complied. “If I tell you everything,” she said, “you’ll let me live?”

“Oh, I’m afraid it’s far too late for that,” he hissed with something approaching glee. “You see, you came after me and mine. I can’t let that stand.”

Her chin rose a fraction of an inch. She winced as the motion pressed the blade more sharply into her skin. “Then why the hell should I tell you anything?”

“Because you know of my… reputation,” he replied. “You know how much experience I have extracting information from unwilling sources. Toy with me, dear, and I can stretch your death out over days.” Deep in the darkest, dankest recesses of his mind, something inside of him prayed that she would. “Whereas if you tell me what I want to know, I’ll dispatch you quickly.” He said the last with careful nonchalance, as though he were simply sending her on a trip upstate.

Mulan’s eyes met his. Whatever she saw there must have frightened her, because she trembled as the tension left her body. “What do you want to know?” she asked, resigned.

“Who are you working for, and what does he want?”

“I don’t know.” At his menacing snarl, she panicked. “I mean it! Everything was handled through a Broker, and the initiating party was left anonymous.” Her serious brown eyes met his, urging him to understand. “You know what that means.”

He did. Only a select few people had the option to request an anonymous contract. The High Table, for one - the twelve individuals at the very top of the hierarchy of the criminal underworld, scattered in different locations across the globe. Every Manager in the Continental chain of hotels was given the same privilege. A select few others, all far outside of Gold’s sphere of influence. 

This contract came from high up, possibly from the very top. He’d suspected as much when he’d thought he was the target. He was right, if for the wrong reasons. So whoever wanted Belle dead was incredibly powerful. But he needed more. He needed to know why.

“Why the secrecy?” he growled. “She’s a librarian, for fuck’s sake! Why would someone that powerful need to hide behind an anonymous contract? And why does he want her dead?”

“How the hell should I know? Do you really think someone that high up tells nobodies like us anything?” Mulan asked rhetorically. “All I know is, my employer didn’t want her dead. Not necessarily, anyway. The price was five million to bring her back dead, ten alive.”

That was something, at least. It certainly explained why the trio used tranquilizers instead of real bullets. They needed her alive. But not everyone would share this group’s caution. Ten million dollars was a lot of money to a hunter, but some would gladly settle for five if it meant the contract was easier to fulfill.

“Where were you going to bring her?” he asked. “You don’t even know who your employer is.”

“The Broker is staying at the Continental in New York,” she said. He twitched the knife against her throat, prompting her to elaborate. “He didn’t give me a name or room number. We met in the bar. He’s a short, fat man with black hair. Wears a suit that looks like it’s two sizes too small. That’s all I know, I swear.”

“One last question, and answer honestly: does anyone else know we’re here?”

She shook her head. “Just us three.”

“Good.” He wasn’t sure if he trusted her. She had no reason to lie; she’d be dead either way. But neither had he given her any particular incentive to be honest. The decade he’d spend breaking people for information hadn’t given him any particular talent for distinguishing truth from lies. To him, torture had simply been a job, a task given him by his employer, one he happened to excel at. Why should he care whether their agonized confessions were truth, or simply a desperate lie told in the hopes of getting him to show mercy?

His grip tightened on the handle of his knife. Now that Mulan had answered his questions, he had no further use for her. He could slit her throat, let her bleed out slowly on the front lawn. For daring to attack Belle, she deserved no less. He peered closer into her eyes. She met his gaze levelly - afraid, but facing her fear head-on. He grudgingly had to respect her for that. He’d long since numbed himself to the pleas, tears and bargaining from his targets, but her quiet acceptance made what he had to do just a little bit easier. Giving her a swift death seemed a fair exchange.

“Be seeing you,” she said.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Be seeing you.” And without further ado, he plunged his knife into her heart.

He’d made it quick, just as he’d promised, he reflected as he cleaned his hands and knife with his pocket square, grimacing at the blood already dried on from last night. There was more blood on his suit, and a quick glance at his side told him that the flare had burned clean through his jacket, waistcoat and shirt. 

A gunshot rang out through the air, quickly followed by the scream of a young girl. The shock of it pulled him from his grim thoughts. “Belle. Paige,” he whispered breathlessly. Limping as fast as his ankle would allow - he’d be no good to anyone if he couldn’t walk - he burst in through the front door to see Belle kneeling over Aurora’s body, the pistol he’d given her clenched in both hands. At his entrance she started with a gasp, pointing the gun in his direction. “It’s me, it’s me!” he said hastily, raising a hand in a calming gesture.

She lowered her weapon, her thumb automatically flicking the safety back on. “The other two,” she said hesitantly. “Are they…?”

“Gone,” he assured her.

The color drained from her face, her eyes widening in panic. Far from looking relieved, she looked absolutely terrified. “They got away?” she asked. Her pallor called his attention to her swollen upper lip and the livid bruise forming on her cheek. 

“No, no. They’re… they’re dead.” He stiffened, bracing himself for her censure. 

The gun dropped from her nerveless fingers, clattering to the ground as she sagged with relief. She looked down at the corpse lying at her knees, and Gold’s gaze followed hers. Judging by the bruise forming around one of Aurora’s sightless eyes, the two had grappled with each other, and Belle had given as good as she got. The bullet wound perfectly centered between Aurora’s eyes was an obvious hint at how the fight had gone.

He looked back to Belle, eyebrows drawing down in worry as he noticed the greenish tinge to her skin. Her lips were pressed tightly together, and she was breathing hard through her nostrils. She looked for all the world like she was going to be sick.

“Belle,” he said softly, reaching a hand out to… he didn’t know. Lay a comforting hand on her shoulder. Take her hand and pull her to her feet, lead her away from the site of her first kill. Take her into his arms and block the sight of death from her eyes, promising her he would never, ever let go. Something.  _ Anything. _

But his attentions were clearly unwanted. She pulled away, recoiling from him as though he were something repugnant. “I can’t,” she muttered, her voice unsteady as she stumbled to her feet. “I need… I need to be alone.” She spared one last lingering glance for Aurora’s body, and rushed out of the room.

Gold watched her go helplessly. It was clear that Belle was upset, that she needed comfort. But if she didn’t want it from him, he couldn’t force her. Even if he tried, it would do no good if she didn’t want to hear it. 

Distantly, he heard the sound of Paige sniffling and sobbing, followed by Jefferson crooning reassurances. Following the source of the sound, he found the pair of them in the kitchen, father cradling daughter close as she cried into his shirt.

At Gold’s entrance, Jefferson looked up. “She’s okay,” he said before Gold could ask. “Just shook up, is all.”

“Good.” A lingering tightness in Gold’s chest loosened. He’d been so careful, checking throughout the night to make sure they weren’t being followed. How the hell had those three found him? If something had happened to Paige… “I wasn’t followed, Jefferson,” he said quietly. “I swear it.”

“I know,” he replied softly, stroking a hand through his daughter’s dark blonde hair. “You’re so paranoid you make me look well-adjusted by comparison. And I know you wouldn’t lie about it.” The look on his face said less about his faith in Gold’s honesty than it did about his own determination to protect Paige at all cost. If Gold had lied about it, Jefferson wouldn’t hesitate to kill him. Or try, as the case may be. “C’mon. I think she’s cried herself out. Let’s get her up to bed.”

“Yeah.” 

The two men made their way slowly up the stairs - Gold due to his ankle, Jefferson the precious bundle he carried. They entered Paige’s room together. Gold turned down the pale pink coverlet, and Jefferson laid his daughter on the bed and pulled the blankets up to her chin. Paige didn’t so much as stir. Despite it being only midmorning, the events of the past hour had tired her out. 

Jefferson snatched up one of the antique chairs Paige used for her tea parties, setting it down next to her bed. “Stay with her,” he instructed. “If she wakes up, she’s going to want to see a familiar face. I have to go check your car. Chances are there’s a tracker attached to it.” Gold nodded, settling into the chair with a wince; bending at the waist aggravated the burn on his left and the bruises on the right. Jefferson turned to leave, hesitating when he reached the door. “Gold,” he said, “I overheard that woman talking to Belle. They’re after her. Not you.”

Gold nodded again. “The woman I killed said as much.”

“She can’t stay here. You know that, right?” he asked. “I mean, it was one thing when we thought you were the target. But if they’re after her… I won’t endanger my Grace, Gold. I won’t.” His jaw was set in a dangerous line. Gold knew from experience not to test him.

“I thought as much,” he said. “Now that we know the contract’s for her, could you run a search on her? The more I can find out, the better.”

“Already one step ahead of you. I plugged her name in as soon as you went upstairs. Should be processed by now.” He gave Gold a mocking little salute. “Give me some time to check your car for trackers, and you and I can check the results together.” And with that, he was gone.

With a sigh, he ran the fingers of his free hand tiredly through his hair. What a mess. When he’d envisioned bringing Belle here, letting her stay at a safe haven while he dealt with the problem, he’d never imagined this. The plan, such as it was, was to have her hide away until the contract was either withdrawn, or resolved with his death. 

But the contract was out for her. How the hell was that even possible? She was a librarian, for fuck’s sake! The Table didn’t exactly make a point of keeping under the radar - they dealt in gold coins and silver Markers and all but made a show of paying for the silence of police and politicians - but they didn’t take out a contract on a civilian without a damn good reason. Now it fell to Gold to find out what that reason was, before Belle paid the ultimate price.

In the back of his mind, an insidious little voice whispered to him. The voice of the old man who ran the orphanage, the one who had drilled the ruthless instinct to bite and claw for his own survival so deeply into his psyche that he’d never be free of it.  _ Leave her, _ it whispered.  _ Why risk your life for someone who wouldn’t do the same for you? In this world, there’s only kill or be killed. If she can’t fight for her own survival, she doesn’t get the privilege of living. _

Gold pushed the words away, face burning in shame. The voice may have been Zoso’s, the words an echo of the constant refrain he’d heard throughout his childhood, but he was the one who summoned them. Thinking of Belle in that way was unworthy and small of him. Those rules only applied to people who were immersed in this life, whether by choice or not. 

And what if she  _ was  _ involved? The idea seemed no less ridiculous than the notion that somebody wanted her dead. But making assumptions without evidence had done him no favors today. He had to consider every possibility. Even if the thought of Belle being a hardened killer seemed about as likely as Paige being the one who took out the contract on her life.

Still, his mind conjured up her face when she’d looked at Aurora’s body: the greenish pallor to her skin, the firm press of her lips, the pinched line between her eyebrows. She’d looked like she was about to be sick. If she’d killed anyone before today, she wouldn’t have had such a visceral reaction.

So: not a hardened killer, then. Which meant nothing. There were plenty of other occupations under the Table that didn’t involve murder. Very few of which would allow for a woman to have a second, full-time job at the library. Most criminals expected members of their payroll to be at their disposal at a moment’s notice. He couldn’t rule it out altogether, but it seemed unlikely. 

She knew something, then. Or she owed someone. Ostensibly, the criminal underworld dealt in cash, in drugs, in stolen goods, in blood. But the true lifeblood of the seedy underbelly of civilization was in knowledge and favors. Knowing the right people, discerning the secrets they hid in the shadows, exploiting their weaknesses, forcing them into a debt they could never hope to repay.

Had that happened to Belle? Did someone have something on her, preying on her good nature for their own gain? His teeth bared at the thought of Belle, frightened and alone, being forced into serving someone against her will. Whoever it was would rue the day he’d dared so much as speak with her.

“Jesus, Gold, when I said Grace would want to see a familiar face, I didn’t mean  _ that _ face,” Jefferson quipped from the doorway.

The man in question leaned against the door jamb, a cell phone dangling teasingly from his fingertips. He beckoned for Gold to join him out into the hallway. Gold followed, closing Paige’s door behind him.

Jefferson presented the phone to him with a flourish. “Behold! Your tracker,” he said with a grin. Clearing his throat, he continued in a more serious tone. “Found it duct taped under your car. This is how those three figured out where you were.”

Gold frowned, turning the phone over in his free hand. He knew little of such things, but to his untrained eye it seemed to be nothing more sophisticated than an everyday smartphone. “This is a tracking device?” he asked uncertainly.

“Oh my god,” Jefferson muttered under his breath with a roll of his eyes. “Gold, I am  _ begging _ you to join me in the twenty-first century.”

“I’d rather not, if it’s all the same.”

“Right, well, I’m not even going to try to explain apps to you. Let’s just say it’s really easy to turn any smartphone into a GPS tracker, and leave it at that.” Jefferson took the phone back, stowing it in the pocket of his jeans. He glanced down at Gold’s side. “Your jacket’s burnt. I noticed that woman you took down had flares on her belt. She get you with one?”

The pain in his side pulsed and throbbed, searing with every beat of his heart. “For a split second,” he admitted, trying to push it past the edge of his awareness. If he could stop focusing on it, maybe he’d stop thinking about it. 

Jefferson snorted. “If you’re admitting she got you, it was probably for longer than a split second.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, toward his bedroom. “Go on. Master bathroom. You know where I keep the first aid kit.”

Gold’s lips pressed in a thin line. “I’m fine. I should see how Belle is.” He moved to brush by Jefferson.

The taller man grabbed him roughly by the shoulder, giving him a hard shake. “Listen here, you idiot, because I’m only going to say this once. You listening?”

“Yes,” he returned through gritted teeth.

“Good. If you don’t take care of yourself, I’ll drug you, drag your skinny butt into the bathroom, and tend your wounds myself.” He gestures toward the closed door of his daughter’s bedroom. “Grace needs you. She’s already lost her mom, and had to leave her entire life in New York behind. She can’t lose her uncle, too. And if Belle has a hope of surviving a contract on her head, she needs you at your best.”

The look in Jefferson’s eyes was deadly serious. Gold knew better than to argue when he was like this. At his best, he could fend Jefferson off with some effort. But injured as he was, with exhaustion pulling at him from last night’s lack of sleep, it wasn’t even worth it to try.

But in the end, it was his words that convinced Gold. Belle needed him. Something primal stirred in him at those three words. Belle needed  _ him _ to protect her, to keep her safe. There was nobody else. For a brief moment, his need to shelter her from the forces bent on her capture warred with his survival instinct. But the thought of Belle dying on his watch turned his stomach. His life had been ash and dust before he’d met her. If her light was snuffed out, to ash and dust it would return.

With ill grace and a reluctant nod, Gold limped down the hallway, through Jefferson’s sparsely decorated bedroom, and into the attached bathroom. He shut the door behind him, not bothering to turn the light on. The sunlight filtering through the bathroom window’s gray curtains provided enough illumination for his purposes. The first aid kit, as expected, was in its usual place in the mirror cabinet. Shutting the cabinet door, he glanced up at his reflection, and froze. His hand clenched around his cane in a white-knuckled grip.

Every morning for the past five years, he’d had a daily routine upon waking. Averting his eyes from the mirror, he would limp his way into the shower, letting the scalding water cascade over his slim, scarred form until the bathroom mirror was completely fogged over. His hair would be combed and styled, the lower half of his face covered in shaving foam before the concealing mist had a chance to fade and reveal his face. Shaving was a meticulous, drawn-out process as he made damn sure not a speck of stubble escaped his razor’s attention. Grooming complete, he would painstakingly dress in the suit he’d selected the night before, dressing each and every day as if the first step out of his apartment was the first step in his own funeral march. It was only a matter of time before that would be true.

Now, seeing the disarray of his hair, the rumpled state of his suit, the accumulated scruff from the past day and a half, sent him back to five years ago - the last time he’d seen himself in such a state. Like today, his face had been bloodied then too; the only difference was that today the blood was not his own. And while he wasn’t as sleep deprived now as he’d been back then - losing only one night of sleep rather than being forced to stay awake for several - the dark circles under his eyes and the pallor in his cheeks looked just as sickly in the grayish light as they had back then.

Chest tight, heart hammering, he gasped for breath. He distantly heard his cane clatter to the floor as he leaned both palms heavily on the sink, head bowed. His vision darkened around the edges as fury and panic spiraled together in his belly. The walls were closing in around him, the cell door slamming shut with the clank of metal on metal. His eyes cast about desperately, settling on the sunlight filtering in through the bathroom window. A window. His cell hadn’t had a window - just four bare concrete walls and the iron bars of the door. This wasn’t his cell. He was in Jefferson’s house. In Storybrooke. Yes.

Stumbling toward the window, he shoved hard at it, trying to open it. It didn’t budge. Panic sank its claws into his heart, and he pounded at it with one fist, snarling a curse. Belatedly, he noticed that the latch was locked. He fumbled at it with trembling fingers. It slid free, and the window gave way under his next push. Fresh air - blessedly crisp, smelling of pine and sunlight and freedom - flowed in through the crack, bathing his sweat-soaked face in cool relief.

“Fuck,” he hissed as his breathing slowed and his heart calmed. “Fuck.”

She was  _ dead,  _ he reminded himself. Dead and gone these past five years, by his own hand. Killed less than a month after he’d been pulled from the hell she’d subjected him to.

A soft rapping at the door drew a start from him. “Rumford?” Belle’s sweet, lilting voice wrapped around his name was enough to dispel the worst of his rage and fear. “Jefferson told me you were in here. He said you may have been burned. Do you need help?”

“That won’t be necessary, Miss French.” He quickly shrugged out of his jacket and knife harness. His waistcoat and button-down shirt were trickier; he had to be careful not to remove them too quickly, in case the fabric had melted to his skin in the heat of the fire. Unbuttoning his waistcoat made his shirt drag painfully over the burn, eliciting a hiss from him.

“That does it. I’m not just going to stand here and do nothing while you’re in pain,” she muttered. “If you’re not decent, cover up; I’m coming in.”

“Wait--” She didn’t listen, of course, bursting into the bathroom before he could even think to stop her. Why, he wondered with some exasperation, hadn’t he bought Jefferson a house with locks on the bathroom doors? “Miss French--”

“Belle,” she interrupted, closing the door behind her. “You’ve saved my life three times now. You can call me by my first name. We’re there.”

“Belle,” he relented, “I can take care of this myself.”

She nodded. “Of course you can,” she agreed, flipping open the first aid kit and rummaging through it. “But you’re going to let me help you. You wouldn’t let me help you when those people attacked, so the least you can do is let me tend to your wounds.”

“Belle--”

“Please, Rumford.” She looked up from the kit, holding ointment in one hand and a roll of gauze in the other. Her blue eyes were raw with pain. “I just killed someone today. For the first time, I shot someone, and they  _ died.”  _ A single tear trickled down her cheek. She scrubbed it away impatiently. “Let me do this. Please. Let me do some good.”

Of course. A creature as kind-hearted, as  _ good _ as Belle would grapple with the guilt of taking another life, even in self-defense. She needed some way to balance the books, as it were - to make up for the life she’d taken. Tending to his wounds was her way of doing that.

Not that it would do any good. Even if he were a saint, a paragon of virtue and goodwill, smearing a bit of ointment on a burn wouldn’t bring back the dead. Tending the wounds of an unrepentant murderer, as far as he was concerned, wasn’t the act of good that Belle was hoping for. But if it helped her come to terms with her feelings, then he wouldn’t disabuse her of the notion.

He nodded, resigned. 

The smile she gave him in return was so radiant his heart ached at the sight. “Thank you,” she breathed, before her tone became more businesslike. “Now: show me where you were burned.” When he moved to lift the side of his shirt and waistcoat away from his injury, she huffed. “I can’t treat it like that,” she admonished. “Come on. Shirt off.”

He hesitated. It had been a long time - years - since he’d let another person see him in any less than his customary three piece suit. To be less than perfectly arrayed before another person was to be vulnerable, and vulnerability was a luxury that couldn’t be bought with every gold coin the Table had ever minted.

He wasn’t particularly self-conscious about his body. He was in good shape for his age; while his current occupation as a Broker wasn’t physically demanding, he had to be ready for anything. The moment he allowed himself to slow down would be the moment he found himself with a knife in his back. He kept himself as fit as his ankle would allow in order to keep that moment at bay for as long as his body would let him.

But his shirtless form was sure to invite questions. Questions that he had neither the time nor the inclination to answer.

Belle must have taken his hesitation for refusal, because she stepped forward and pushed the waistcoat from his shoulders, her hands sliding the material slowly down his arms. His breath caught in his throat. If undressing for Belle left him feeling uncomfortably open and unguarded, then being undressed by Belle was like being flayed alive in the most wonderfully terrifying way. He wanted to stop her. He wanted her to keep going. He wanted to slow down and make this moment last forever.

As her hands strayed to his tie, he laid his own on them to stop her. “I can…” He cleared the hoarseness from his throat. “I can do that.” 

She backed away a step, her hands slipping from his, and watched him expectantly. Meeting her even gaze with a challenging state of his own, he complied with her wish. Rather than unknotting the tie, he simply loosened the noose of silk around his neck, slipping it over his head and draping it next to his jacket and waistcoat. The cuff links were next, slipped from his sleeves and placed carefully on the countertop. Finally, his fingers went to the buttons of his royal blue shirt. As he popped them open one by one, Belle’s impossibly blue eyes finally left his, fixing themselves on his fingers as they busied themselves with their task. Opening the shirt pulled a hiss of air through his clenched teeth as a frisson of pain shot through his left side. Blood has congealed in the soft blue cotton, staining it burgundy and making it stick to the wound.

“Easy,” she scolded gently as he shrugged out of the garment. Then she stared.

Years of practice concealing discomfort both physical and emotional kept Gold from squirming under the weight of her eyes, but only just. Like anyone who had led a life like his, his skin was marred with the scars of wounds he’d taken in the past. A bullet hole here, the slash of a knife there, and on his left bicep, tooth marks from where an old acquaintance’s dog had bitten deep and held on. But what seemed to hold Belle’s attention were his tattoos. Some were decades old, the newest only a few months old, each one with a story behind it.

Belle’s lower lip disappeared behind her teeth, her cheeks pinkening slightly as her gaze drifted slowly downward. He felt her regard like a caress, a shiver tripping down his spine. The spell was broken when her eyes settled on his middle - on the broken skin of the burn on his left side, and the livid bruise forming on the right. She made a sound low in her throat, as though his pain were her own. She reached a hand out to his scalded flesh. He made to flinch back, but she didn’t touch him - merely let her palm hover less than an inch from the wound.

Her voice, when she spoke, was clinical and businesslike. “There’s a lot of heat still coming from that burn,” she said, as matter-of-factly as if she were discussing the weather. “We’ll need to cool it quickly. Strip off and get in the shower.”

“I beg your pardon?” Surely he’d misheard her. There was simply no way that Belle French had casually told him to strip in front of her - even for so innocent a reason.

“We need to cool that burn,” she repeated patiently. “If it was on your hand, we could just run it under the tap. But it’s on your side, so either you need to get in the shower, or we have to use a cool washcloth.”

While a cool shower would likely do wonders to calm his libido in the face of her curiosity, being naked in the same room as her would do him no favors. “I’ll take my chances with the washcloth.”

She shrugged. “Suit yourself,” she said, rummaging through the nearby linen closet until she found what she was looking for. After a thorough wash of her hands, she sat down on the toilet with the cool, damp cloth. “This is going to sting,” she cautioned. 

Thus warned, he didn’t make a sound when the cloth was gently pressed to his side. The rough terry cloth irritated the burn, but the coolness of the water soothed its heat. His abdominal muscles jumped when her cool fingers touched the bruise on his other side.

“This is a bad bruise,” she murmured. “We should really get you to a hospital to make sure nothing’s broken.”

“It’s not,” he assured her, mostly sure that he wasn’t lying. He’d had cracked ribs before, and it had felt much worse than this. Besides, they could ill afford to go to a hospital. “They’re just bruised, not broken.”

Looking up, her eyes searched his. She seemed satisfied with whatever she found, nodding and lifting the cloth to check the heat from the burn. She rinsed the cloth under the cool tap and pressed it back to his side. It didn’t sting as much this time.

“You know a lot about this,” he brought up conversationally, mostly to distract himself from just how interesting a sight it was seeing her head at hip level.

She shrugged. “Mum insisted,” she said casually. “Ever since I was little, she was always enrolling me in classes. Everything from first aid to self defense to car repairs. She said it was important for me to know how to take care of myself.”

A stab of envy shot through Gold’s chest. Where he had been thrown among the wolves and forced to fight for his survival, Belle had been gently taught the art of self-sufficiency. It was no wonder the two of them were so different. He pushed the unworthy emotion to the side. “She sounds like a smart woman.”

Her answering smile was a sad, fragile thing. “She was,” she said quietly.

Dead, then. Something they had in common, though Gold had never known his own mother. “And was she the one who taught you how to shoot?” he asked. At her surprised look, he gave a rueful quirk of the lips. “You held that pistol like you’ve handled them before,” he observed. “And that shot was no mere beginner’s luck.”

“I told you I could’ve helped,” she chided him. “You just assumed I didn’t know what I was doing.”

“True.” He’d been so hell-bent on protecting Belle that he’d underestimated her. He would do well to avoid that in the future. “So was it your mother who taught you?”

“No.” Those beautiful blue eyes of hers, normally so warm and inviting, went positively glacial, her jaw jutting out angrily. “An old boyfriend taught me. He was obsessed with hunting and marksmanship, and demanded that I learn.” With an overly casual shrug she smoothed all emotion from her face, rewetting and reapplying the cloth. “I didn’t much care for the shotguns he favored, but I enjoyed shooting a pistol.” She got a faraway look on her face as she recalled her old flame. “He took me on a hunting trip once.  _ Screamed  _ at me when I refused to shoot an animal, and wouldn’t talk to me for the rest of the trip. But it just felt… wrong. Killing something just for sport. I realized that I didn’t want to be a killer.” For a long moment, she was quiet, her shoulders slumped. “And until today, I wasn’t,” she added quietly.

Gold wanted to offer her some sort of comfort. Perhaps he could tell her that killing in self-defense was somehow better than murder for sport. That it was justified when your life was on the line. But he didn’t believe it. No matter the motivations or reasoning, the end was always the same. Dead was dead.

“Is it always like that?” she asked softly.

“Like what?”

“Easy,” she whispered. He didn’t respond - simply waited for her to elaborate. “When that woman said she was coming for me, I just… I didn’t even think. I attacked her, got that gun away from her. We fought, and it was like I wasn’t even in my own body. I was just  _ watching _ , like it was on TV. And when I pointed the gun at her head…” She shuddered. “It was so  _ easy. _ I always thought I’d have this… I don’t know, this internal struggle. I’d have this moment of truth, where I decided whether to murder someone to save my own life. But I didn’t. I pulled the trigger without even thinking about it.”

“And that’s a good thing,” he told her. “If you’d hesitated, she would have pressed her advantage, and you’d be in their hands right now.” She looked unconvinced as she checked the temperature of his burn, nodding in approval before grabbing a clean cloth and soap, washing it gently. He placed a hand over both of hers, stilling them. “But you regret doing it. That’s what sets you apart from people like them, Belle. People like me. You see death, and you’re not numb to it. You grieve. You regret. That’s a precious quality that sets you apart from people in my life.” Her fingers trembled under his. He gave them a light squeeze, and let go. “Hold onto that. Because once it’s lost, there’s no getting it back.”

They remained silent for several moments - her focusing on her task, him watching. Once the burn was washed, she gently patted it dry before reaching for a large piece of gauze. She taped it loosely to his side. 

When she next spoke, her voice was strained, trying and failing at levity. “I was surprised to see you have tattoos,” she remarked. “I didn’t peg you for the type.”

“True,” he said with a forced grin, “but then, you probably also didn’t peg me as the type of man who killed for a living.” 

He regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth. But surprisingly enough, Belle only laughed. He couldn’t decide whether he was relieved or sickened at her new cavalier attitude toward his violent lifestyle.

“Do any of them have a meaning? Some personal significance?” she clarified.

That was a subject he’d much rather let lie. But one look in the limpid pools of her eyes weakened his resistance. She obviously wanted to take her mind off of what she’d been forced to do today. How could he possibly deny her the distraction she sought?

Simple: he couldn’t.

“Every one,” he confirmed as she finished up, rising to her feet.

“Will you tell me?”

“Most of them aren’t pleasant,” he warned, picking up his discarded shirt and draping it over his right arm. Belle bent down to pick up his cane where he’d dropped it earlier. He nodded in gratitude.

“I’d still like to hear.” When he didn’t immediately respond, she sighed. “Look, Rumford, I just found out that someone in some… hidden criminal underworld is trying to have me killed. I might not live past tomorrow. Can’t I at least get to know you, even a little?”

How could he possibly resist that? With a sigh of his own, he relented. “Fine. In the bedroom. I’m not having this conversation in a bloody bathroom,” he muttered. He held up a single finger. “You can ask about  _ one, _ and I will answer honestly.”

Together, they left the bathroom, standing in Jefferson’s sparsely decorated bedroom. Belle, it seemed, had no interest in the modern furniture or earth tones the younger man favored. She only had eyes for Gold. A part of him wanted to stand straighter, puff his chest out and lay himself bare to her perusal, while the other part wanted nothing more than to cover himself from neck to toe in his ever-present suit. In the end, he did neither.

Belle circled him slowly, looking for all the world like a predator stalking its prey. Being sized up was a feeling Gold had never cared for, but as she eyed him up and down from every angle, he couldn’t bring himself to mind. Still, he carefully kept his shirt draped over his right forearm. With his hand resting on his cane, she didn’t seem to notice.

Finally, she came to stop in front of him. Tentatively, she reached a hand out to him, laying it on his chest. Or, more accurately, resting her palm on the Roman numeral tattoo on his left pectoral: “X-X-MCMLXXXV.” Beneath the cool touch of her hand, his heart raced and his skin tingled.

“This one,” she murmured. “It’s a date, isn’t it? October tenth, 1985.” 

He nodded. Of all the images to settle on, she had to choose that one.

“You inscribed it over your heart,” she whispered. “It must be important to you.”

It was, but not for the reason she hoped. Not some great love or hopeful sentiment. “It… was… the first time I killed a man,” he confessed.

“But…” She frowned. “You were  _ fifteen?” _ she demanded, trying to keep the horror from her voice. Trying, and failing.

“It was my final test,” he said, “one last lesson from my teacher before I was contracted to my first employer. A man was placed in a room with me. I wasn’t told anything about him. I was given a dagger, and simply told: ‘Choose. Either kill, or die.’ I wasn’t told who he was until afterward.”

He waited for Belle to remove her hand, to recoil from him in disgust. She did neither, leaving her hand pressed to him until it warmed with the heat of his own skin. 

“And who was he?”

“No one in particular. Just a mediocre conman beneath the notice of anyone smart enough to see him coming,” he muttered bitterly.

Belle’s eyes bored deeply into his, tearing him open and laying his soul bare. “Did he deserve it?” she asked.

He scoffed, trying to gentle the sound of his derision as much as he could. Again she was trying to apply some rigid sense of morality to the things he’d done. What did it matter whether a person deserved death? Either way, he’d doled it out indiscriminately. 

“I suppose that depends on who you ask,” he said smoothly, his face a mask of unconcern. “If you asked the man I killed, he’d say he’d done nothing wrong.” His mind’s eye effortlessly conjured the man’s pleading brown eyes, his begging words.  _ Come now, laddie, there’s no need for this! Anyone would’ve done the same in my shoes. _ “If you asked the man who taught me everything I know, he’d say that any man who signed a contract without reading the fine print deserved whatever they got.” Pathetic brown eyes turned to arctic blue, the rasp of his teacher’s voice little comfort to the boy scrubbing the blood off his hands.  _ He made a deal he didn’t understand. He won’t be making that mistake again. _

Belle’s other hand came to rest on his stubble-roughened cheek. It took every last bit of self-control he had not to nuzzle into her palm, to accept the comfort she offered so freely to one so undeserving. But he couldn’t bring himself to pull away.

“And if I asked you?” she prompted.

His next breath was shakier than he would have liked. Finding some hidden reserve of strength, he took one limping step back, mourning the loss of her touch as her hands fell away. He turned his back to her and busied himself with putting his shirt back on as a distraction, threading his arms through the sleeves.

“Rum?” she asked quietly as he did up the buttons.

“I would say that any man who willingly condemned his child to that hellhole in exchange for a few thousand pounds deserved much worse than the death I gave him.” He shrugged into his waistcoat, leaving it unbuttoned. The burn on his side needed room to breathe, which the snug fit of the waistcoat wouldn’t provide.

“But…” He could practically hear the wheels turning on her head behind him. When her horrified gasp reached his ears, his head lowered in resignation. “Your  _ father? _ They had you kill your  _ father? _ And what do you mean, he  _ sold _ you? I thought…” She trailed off, sputtering in wordless indignation.

“I told you: my world is an unpleasant place to live,” he said without turning. “I’d hoped, in bringing you here, to spare you from seeing it for yourself. But now that we know that you’re the target…” He gestured vaguely, helplessly. Hopelessly. “There are things that I’d rather you didn’t know, but I can’t keep you in the dark about the situation we find ourselves in. Not if we’re both to survive.” He turned to her then, taking in her frightened posture, her hands clutching the neckline of her blue cardigan. But it was her eyes that arrested him. Where he expected to see fear and trepidation, he saw only firm resolve. Perhaps she wasn’t as helpless as he’d first thought. “But remember this, first and foremost: in my world, loyalty is bought and paid for. A person who has saved your life countless times over the years will turn on you at a moment’s notice if the pay is right. Under the Table, everything has a price. Trust no one.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you who don't follow me on Tumblr, my release schedule is going to slow down for a while. a year of staring at computer screens for 10-14 hours a day, 7 days a week, without my glasses has done me zero favors. My eyes are in desperate need of a break. My weekly updates will probably become biweekly for the next month or so. We'll see.
> 
> Note: Next chapter, Belle is probably going to get some explanations. If there's anything you'd like to see me elaborate on, worldbuilding-wise, shoot me a message. If it fits with the narrative I'll do my best to work it in.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sure those of you who haven't seen the movies might have questions about the worldbuilding. I will do my best to make things as clear as possible, and elaborate as I go. If anything is unclear, hit me up and I'll try to make a point to clarify in the next chapter. Also: The John Wick movies are very violent, and this fic will likely go in a similar direction. Read at your own risk.
> 
> Finally: If you want to see when this fic updates, you can follow me on Tumblr: deliriumsdelight7.tumblr.com. I participate in TMI Tuesdays and I LOVE asks. Hope to hear from you!


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